Tim, If you are looking for an O'Scope I would suggest a local hamfest. You can find local hamfests by searching on the ARRL website http://www.arrl.org. Click on the .Hamfests link in the header and search for your area. If you are not sure which scope to buy, or how much it will cost check the qrp-l archives. Occasionally there is a discussion on the QRP-L reflector about O'Scopes. You can search the archives at: http://qrp.lehigh.edu/lists/qrp-l/. Hope this helps. 73/72 - Kevin, W8VOS ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Hart" To: Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 12:57 PM Subject: [PIC:] or [EE:] O Scope Blues... I have a little Dilemma.... The task of finding a Oscilloscope! First off...I don't have wads of cash to spend on this and I'm very new at electronics in general. I'm going to be looking at Real Time data maybe some AC and One shot serial or IC2 transmissions. Right now I need to debug some Serial transmissions but it would also serve as a learning tool...:) I'm not sure if an Analog scope can cover those transient events. I know it can handle sine waves and the like....but two channel sends and receives....I'm not so sure. So a Storage Scope seems appropriate for those. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't totally understand that "Trigger"... I'm a Network Tech by day so having a Computer do the work seems very natural for me. So I went searching for USB devices.... OptaScope is not bad....the price seems fair for 1 M/s. No AC and DC is limited also...it would be nice to double check power supplies... http://www.optascope.com/ And it might cover me for the Serial and IC2 data. But at PIC clock speeds it's going to start to break down...I can't double check the 4 MHZ clock with this....it's just assumed to be working. And I can't measure the delay of an output pulse at that speed either. Still a contender for the money. The next contender is the BitScope... http://www.bitscope.com/ No way with my current level of electronics could I assemble it...so I'd have to buy the assembled kit. It's more then I really have to spend for one but I'd be willing to save up for one if I knew it would be a well worth it. The part about the "BS300 includes compensation for this convertor to achieve 100 MHZ bandwidth throughout." is a bit confusing. But hey...even 50Mhz should cover me... Overall I'm very impressed with it. Ebay has many analog scopes....but few Digital Storage ones. I'm also not really 100% sure I want to go that route...I wouldn't know how to fix anything if it had issues. The idea of Used being cheaper doesn't seem to apply to Oscilloscopes...:( In the Astronomy world we have "AstroMart"...the equipment goes for less because we are all amateur astronomers and we support one another. Do we have something like that for Electronics? Also under consideration are handheld scopes. But not much for storage on those. Gameboy and Palm Scopes are a joke...they cost more then "Real" Handheld scopes...! And no PC....I have PC's all over the place....1.5 Gig should be able to run fine!! Now to me it seems PCI cards would offer the best price. You don't need ram...you can dump it into system RAM! The processing could be done by the 1.5 Gig CPU. So I went looking....GAGE has some nice cards. But at $6,000 it's way out of my dream range! My car was less then that!!! And to top it off...you have to buy the software too!!! Sound cards can't measure DC very well and with very little Hz....might be a waste of time.. So that leaves me wondering....what should I look for now. Are these the only options? Maybe I've missed something? So that brings me here...to where the great minds gather! An ideas? My ideal price range is $200....but I could save up if I had to....:) And last but not least....you may have noticed some "Paralysis by Analysis"...unfortunately I suffer a bit of that :) Thanks in advance! Tim -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics