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ISO oscilloscope

Cable Guy

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Dec 29, 2010
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My main oscilloscope died today. It was an old Elenco S-1345 40Mhz dual channel. I am in need of another, at least as good but better if it's newer. I don't have lots of revenue, so if someone has one to sell here with a "friend discount" please let me know. I have made do with this antique for about 12 years, and it was old when I got it. If you have a suggestion for a new one, decently priced, please leave it here. There are so many new options available with attractive pricing, but I don't know what to avoid. I have never used a digital scope, and many of the specs listed are bewildering. Thank you.
 

Also, if anyone knows where the schematic is for this elenco, I would be grateful. A few resistors burned after the vertical deflection stopped. Some silicon somewhere died and burned the resistors in the process. If I had a schematic I could probably fix it. I did find a vague block diagram in the manual.
 
Unsure what oscilloscopes most prefer these days. A couple of my friends have that Rygol branded O-Scope. They went as far as to modifying the firmware to unlock a ton of feature on it. I don't have the exact model on hand, but may be a good candidate for ya.
 
Get at least a 100Mhz one
Why at least 100 MHz
My main oscilloscope died today. It was an old Elenco S-1345 40Mhz dual channel. I am in need of another, at least as good but better if it's newer. I don't have lots of revenue, so if someone has one to sell here with a "friend discount" please let me know. I have made do with this antique for about 12 years, and it was old when I got it. If you have a suggestion for a new one, decently priced, please leave it here. There are so many new options available with attractive pricing, but I don't know what to avoid. I have never used a digital scope, and many of the specs listed are bewildering. Thank you.
My main oscilloscope died today. It was an old Elenco S-1345 40Mhz dual channel. I am in need of another, at least as good but better if it's newer. I don't have lots of revenue, so if someone has one to sell here with a "friend discount" please let me know. I have made do with this antique for about 12 years, and it was old when I got it. If you have a suggestion for a new one, decently priced, please leave it here. There are so many new options available with attractive pricing, but I don't know what to avoid. I have never used a digital scope, and many of the specs listed are bewildering. Thank you.
O'scopes are cheap these days in the used market.
 
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I found a rigol DH0802 in my price range. I could get the 100Mhz version. Not crazy about the touchscreen and lack of knobs, it's menu driven and probably requires a tedious learning course to use it. I am an analog person in a digital world so I need to put the thinking cap on and learn how to decipher the functions and how it translates analog signals into the digital format it uses, understanding the bit depth, sampling rate, waveform capture rates and whatnot. I need a digital o'scope for dummies book. I only use it for <35Mhz stuff and it's vertical sensitivity is 500uV, far more sensitive than the 5mv/div I have been used to.
 
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Definitely get one with a higher BW. Always go 5-10x higher BW than the frequency you expect to use it at.

The sample rate is the number of samples per second. Consider a 2GS/s rate looking at a 200MHz signal. 1/2,000,000,000= a sample every 500ps. At 200MHz, a cycle is 5000ps, so you will get 10 samples (dots) per RF cycle. Interpolation turns the dots into a smooth line that hopefully represents the true signal. The more dots per cycle, the more you can see the actual sine wave and not some mathematical guess as to its shape.

The bit depth is the vertical resolution. So if you get a 12-bit scope, your vertical resolution is divided up into 2^12=4096 discrete steps. Thats the number of steps the ADC has.

Also consider that the amplitude displayed is only 71% of actual at the scope's stated bandwidth, so the closer you are to that limit, the less accurate the amplitude.

You might want to see a harmonic, or might have a problem caused by such a fast rising signal that a lower BW scope might not see. The most common way to measure scope bandwidth is to inject a square wave with an edge faster than your scope can draw and see what it does draw. The rise time and bandwidth are related by the formula rise time s=0.35/BW.

Your choice in BW should not be based on the most common signals you will look at, but rather on the fastest signals you might encounter (and how much of the actual waveform is meaured rather than interpolated).
 
Definitely get one with a higher BW. Always go 5-10x higher BW than the frequency you expect to use it at.

The sample rate is the number of samples per second. Consider a 2GS/s rate looking at a 200MHz signal. 1/2,000,000,000= a sample every 500ps. At 200MHz, a cycle is 5000ps, so you will get 10 samples (dots) per RF cycle. Interpolation turns the dots into a smooth line that hopefully represents the true signal. The more dots per cycle, the more you can see the actual sine wave and not some mathematical guess as to its shape.

The bit depth is the vertical resolution. So if you get a 12-bit scope, your vertical resolution is divided up into 2^12=4096 discrete steps. Thats the number of steps the ADC has.

Also consider that the amplitude displayed is only 71% of actual at the scope's stated bandwidth, so the closer you are to that limit, the less accurate the amplitude.

You might want to see a harmonic, or might have a problem caused by such a fast rising signal that a lower BW scope might not see. The most common way to measure scope bandwidth is to inject a square wave with an edge faster than your scope can draw and see what it does draw. The rise time and bandwidth are related by the formula rise time s=0.35/BW.

Your choice in BW should not be based on the most common signals you will look at, but rather on the fastest signals you might encounter (and how much of the actual waveform is meaured rather than interpolated).
Thank you for the explanation. I went with the 70mhz DHO802 scope, but testing shows it to be much higher, around 125mhz, and a firmware hack can allow it to go higher that 200mhz, or so I have read. Either way, it's nicer than what I had.
 
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I think you are going to like it. With an analog scope, you have nothing but the divisions on the graticule to measure things. The digital scope is going to give you a ton of different measurements that can be displayed right there on the screen. You get math channels too, including a nice FFT spectrum analyzer.
 
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I think you are going to like it. With an analog scope, you have nothing but the divisions on the graticule to measure things. The digital scope is going to give you a ton of different measurements that can be displayed right there on the screen. You get math channels too, including a nice FFT spectrum analyzer.
2 cents..My at least 35 year old dumpster find analog O-scope is easy, quick and intuitive. Displaying analog data with an analog scope is the way the radio gods intended it.
My digital is somewhere on the shelf. But it works.
 
2 cents..My at least 35 year old dumpster find analog O-scope is easy, quick and intuitive. Displaying analog data with an analog scope is the way the radio gods intended it.
My digital is somewhere on the shelf. But it works.
My first scope was a USB picoscope, so I started out with no knobs at all. Everything was done with the mouse. I guess I am fortunate in that respect because it made going from that to my standalone digital scope feel like a real game changer. Being able to grab a vertical or horizontal knob and turn it is definitely nice.

I think I have knobs for just about everything an analog scope had a knob for, except maybe trigger, which is easy enough. IDK, I guess after having used it for a little while now, mine seems plenty intuitive. The features gained are worth the small learning curve. It's really no different than getting a new radio. Eventually, it becomes second nature to use.
 
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2 cents..My at least 35 year old dumpster find analog O-scope is easy, quick and intuitive. Displaying analog data with an analog scope is the way the radio gods intended it.
My digital is somewhere on the shelf. But it works.
Mine was a dumpster find also, and I have been blessed to have it for as long. I'm excited to get a digital o'scope, and weary of it all the same. Everything is going digital and I might as well follow. I am still looking for a decent analog o'scope in case I can't figure the new-fangled thing out, but the digital one is buying me some time to be choosey.
 
Cable, I have both analog and digital. Things can be said about one or the other, but when looking at some of the things we do, at times, I prefer the analog. My digital scope was making me nuts last week, I was ready to throw it out the window. Had to get on the analog and I was good.

Mine was a dumpster find also, and I have been blessed to have it for as long. I'm excited to get a digital o'scope, and weary of it all the same. Everything is going digital and I might as well follow. I am still looking for a decent analog o'scope in case I can't figure the new-fangled thing out, but the digital one is buying me some time to be choosey.
 

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