At 07:11 02/17/99 +0000, Nigel Goodwin wrote:
>One final point, what does having the scope earthed protect you against
>anyway?. Is there anything else apart from breakdown in it's internal
>mains transformer), or some kind of short between incoming live and the
>case.

|well, the point is that often the scope's case is connected to its earth.
|if you have to disconnect the scope's earth from the power earth (which is
|approx. your potential), it is because you want to put the scope's earth on
|a different potential -- which means, a different potential from =you=.
|which would be right on the case, right? now i touch my scope every now and
|then when working with it, don't know about others... so i definitely want
|to be sure the scope's case it at approx. my potential. connect it to the
|power earth is a good means to assure this (except when there is a short in
|the scope, but that's another matter).

Would a GFCI be at all useful as a safety measure?  Would floating
the scope but plugging it and the device under test into seperate
GFCI's be reasonably safe?


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