Which Oscilloscope?

tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
If anything, the Tek 7623A, but they are both ancient and would do you no good compared to even a slightly more recent scope (mid 80s to 90s digitising.)

What is your budget?

I picked up an old digitising oscilloscope for £150 from a local surplus test equipment store. Have a look around for surplus places.
 

Thread Starter

ra1ph

Joined Jan 5, 2010
31
Budget is €200, don't know of any surplus places, living in Ireland. Any decent scopes on ebay etc, way out of my budget.
 

tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
Budget is €200, don't know of any surplus places, living in Ireland. Any decent scopes on ebay etc, way out of my budget.
Google for them - if you don't look, you don't find. 200 euros will buy a lot, just make sure you don't get left with a boat anchor. Many of the old scopes on eBay are not working (no matter if they state "perfect working order", you have little recourse if it breaks after a few weeks of use because it's been in storage for 5 years or something like that), or at least are not particularly useful for what you might do.

My HP 54501A - 100 MHz bandwidth, 10 MS/s sample rate (not very fast compared to modern scopes but enough for me), nice CRT display, cost me £150, which really was a good price, but the place I bought it from had hundreds of others.

Another option is to call up schools and universities, ask them if they will sell you an older scope which they don't use any more. Most will be happy to get rid of them.

I don't know if you can stretch your budget, but for £250 (~293 euros) you can buy a new Rigol DS1052E digitising oscilloscope.
 

mjhilger

Joined Feb 28, 2011
118
Do you have a specific use you are targeting? Have you used a scope much before? I have a fairly modern Tek digital scope and it has capabilities for triggering that have allowed me to catch glitches and other signals of interest in minutes. Whereas in the past; using old analog scope, I have spent many hours in a dark room with the intensity turned up trying to catch a glitch or one time event that I thought might cause a problem. And do you have a particular bandwidth you specifically need?
The old scopes are good, but have warm up issues, alignment issues, etc. If you don't need it for serious work, and just need to see the signals, then the older scopes will work fine for you. If you need the percision measurements, and complex triggering, I would seriously saving up a little more, take your time and get one that will be truly useful for years to come.
 

N3whit3

Joined Feb 24, 2011
4
I use a HP54602B, 150MHZ, and picked it up for 216 euros (300 US).

Make sure you budget for probes. You can easily spend 36 euros on a single probe and I expect you probably two at least.
 

mjhilger

Joined Feb 28, 2011
118
I don't know much about the brand, but I'm sure you will be happier in the long run with the much newer and more capable scope.
Have fun!
 
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