The Fool wrote:
I am planning on purchasing my first new oscilloscope since the Heathkit one I built back in the 70's. I'm looking for recommendations and suggestions. My price range is somewhere around $500. I was thinking that a color LCD one would be a good choice.
and received lots of advice that looks pretty good. I have a couple of
old analog scopes, a 7704A and a SC501. The 7704 works well and has
reasonable bandwidth, but is really outrageously large and heavy. The
SC503 is fine for its 11 MHz BW. Storage is no longer functional, and
analog storage scopes aren't that great even when they work.
But old as I am, I'm going to stick up for digital scopes. They can do
things the analog ones just can't do. I appreciate the information on
the Rigol products, may have to invest in one. The comments about the
front-end are of course well taken, but that's the same for analog or
digital. My son had one of the Parallax things in high school and it
really isn't useful for much beyond looking at well behaved audio.
And while the USB scopes may not be worthwhile, I've gotten a lot of
mileage out of my Intronix USB logic analyzer. Not as good as the
GoLogic I have at work, but at 1/10 the cost well worth it.
- Rick
