>There are some cases where the analog 'scope is easier to use.
>XY mode being one, and a second being running on auto trigger
>when you are probing around not quite sure of what you are
>looking for. I can make the TDS430 work in both these cases,
>but the 465 is preferable.

I would go along with attitude as well. I have a couple of Tek DSO's
available to me, but there are cases where an analogue scope gives you a
better picture of what is actually going on. There are times where
interpreting what you see on the DSO is a bit of a "black art" ("there ha=
s
to be a glitch there") which you would see a sign of on an analogue one. =
I
have also had examples where the waveform changed the extraneous noise on=
 it
as the timebase was changed, affecting the sampling rate, which affected =
how
the noise was displayed. It made it quite annoying setting out to determi=
ne
what the actual noise was.

The DSO is great for capturing very slow repetition rate signals, or
triggering on a known signal, and wanting to see something that happened
just before on another waveform. But for most things an analogue scope wi=
ll
do most everything you want.

At the end of the day it would still be possible to build a digital front
end to go on an analogue scope that gave the digital storage and pre-trig=
ger
capture features of a DSO, but using the analogue scope as the display
device. For someone setting out to bootstrap themselves up like you are, =
I
would suggest that one of the tek 400 series already mentioned, or a 2200
series, would be a great way to start. In the HP line the standard machin=
e
used to be the 1740, but these are now somewhat too old and heavy to
consider unless you got it extremely cheap.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2567276184&categor=
y=3D150
4 - just the scope, get some probes from RS or farnell.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2568222190&categor=
y=3D450
14 - somewhat more expensive, but an alternative.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2568999613&categor=
y=3D150
4 - has reserve, will probably be outside your budget.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2569004610&categor=
y=3D150
4 - another worthwhile contender.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2568417406&categor=
y=3D450
14 - has a buy-it-now at =A3150, was a BT unit, so may have had a hard li=
fe,
but again could well be OK.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3D2569347112&categor=
y=3D150
4 - probes, don't know what the normal RS price is, but these could be
contenders.

I would not recommend Telequipment or Philips units. Others may be happy
with them, but I find the Philips units do not suit me, and the Telequipm=
ent
ones were not really well made. Some of the Japanese made units may do yo=
u
alright, but for similar money I would prefer to see a "name" unit.

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