At 15:12 02/23/99 -0600, John Payson wrote:
>Obviously, the operative words here are "don't do that",

wow, it sure needs some phantasy to come up with this one! :)

>but this
>type of situation may be what scope designers were trying to avoid
>when they earthed the scope ground.

but they sure couldn't avoid that somebody blows his head off because he
connects the scope ground to a hot wire -- that would be the same joe who
uses bob's scope :))

hm... instead of cheating with the earth pin on the plug, has anybody tried
to disconnect a scope's circuit ground from the (earthed) case? for the
"single user mode" safe user? :)

ge


and a PS: the "better" scopes, with double isolation and no earth or
battery-operated and therefore earth-free, may still have the common signal
ground between channels (most do). your argument would apply to these as
well, so i guess it's at least not the whole story.