re: Scopes

   Mike, I was brought up on, and trained in, Tektronix equipment as
their home base is here in Oregon (This was the late 60's...). I
recommend them without question due to their quality, performance, and
support. You do pay a price though. About three years ago, I went off
on my own again for the third time and I was lucky to find a 465B with
the DM44 for around $500. I got it from a former Tek engineer who now
sells used Tek scopes and manuals. I would have had to pay over a $1000
and this scope is nearly 20 years old... That's Tektronix quality. There
are other good scopes, especially HP. I've also used (and built) the old
Heathkit, Phillips, B&K, HP of course, LeCroy, Hitachi, and I'm sure
some others.

   As far as capturing waveforms on a PC, it's almost impossible to do
logic-related hardware designs without using digital storage now days.
Timing analysis is crucial whether it relates to an IR remote control,
an SPI or I2C bus, parallel bus setup, etc, etc... Now days, the
difference between a scope and logic analyzer is fading. I both cases,
the ability to capture data and process it has become a valuable tool.

   - Tom

At 12:50 AM 12/4/97 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thu, 4 Dec 1997 17:02:43 +1300 Andrew Mayo <andrew@GEAC.CO.NZ> writes:
>>You get what you pay for. The Velleman scope is pretty limited -
>>there's
>>a good review in a recent issue of Electronics Australia which I know
>>you won't find easy to get up there, but I'll see if I can dig it up.
>>Tek make excellent gear - and yes, it would be nice to get a scope
>>trace
>>into the PC.
>
>Various new Japanese or Korean 40 MHz analog scopes can be bought in the
>$300 range.  I don't know if they're any good though.  When buying used,
>you can't go to far wrong with anything Tektronix.  The older "modular"
>models are very inexpensive, but big and heavy.  Make sure it has useful
>general-purpose modules with it (i.e. not the strain gauge amplifier
>one).  You may luck into the novel spectrum analyzer or high-speed
>sampler modules, but expect to pay more for them than the entire rest of
>the rig.  The "portable" versions of the mid-70s are also plentiful.
>These are often in poorer operating condition; portable mis-handling
>having taken its toll in the form of broken switches and intermittent
>connections inside.  Make sure to have at least 1 scope probe, you can
>usually use a direct connection of the less-critical signal when using 2
>channels.
>
>I never found much need to transfer waveforms into a PC, unless
>publishing results, doing automatic tests, or monitoring something for a
>long time.  I certainly wouldn't want a scope that requires a PC to work.
>
>
>My PIC bench just has a really cheap 5 MHz single-channel scope on it.
>For a while it was a Heathkit, then I upgraded to triggered sweep with a
>"Bell and Howell Schools" one, which looks a lot like a Heathkit inside.
>Either one is a lot better than no scope.  By designing the test
>carefully it's possible to not demand too much of the scope.
>
>