5 responses to “EEVblog #384 – Agilent 4000X Oscilloscope Teardown”

• Anatol November 16th, 2012 at 01:02

  I’m a little bit tired of watching “tear aparts” of fancy oscilloscopes and multimeters. I bet my bottom dollar these are sponsored by manufacturing companies

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  • Nicholas Vinen November 16th, 2012 at 07:48

    They lend him a unit to review because it’s good advertising for them. David, being David, then goes ahead and pulls it apart to see what’s inside. I’d say that’s as far as the “sponsorship” goes in most cases.

    I know because I often get demo units to review, too. I don’t pull them apart because I know if I do, once I’ve put it all back together I’ll have a screw left over and then how do I explain that!

    If I was the marketing manager of a test instrument company that just released a new scope I’d lend one to Savid too. It’s good exposure. And I for one find the teardown interesting, mainly because I like to see how they do the layout and all the separate little circuit blocks sprinkled around.

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  • EEVblog November 16th, 2012 at 13:07

    Then why do you bother watching them? You don’t have to watch every video I produce.
    I do not understand people who say they don’t like this or that type of video, and yet continue to complain every time they choose to watch one!
    No, the videos are not “sponsored” by the manufacturing companies. I chose to review and tear down these things because that’s what I personally like to do. Not to mention that most of my audience like to see inside a high end scope they likely will never get to take apart themselves. The <1% "thumbs down" on these types of videos show that it's what people want to see.
    It's clear from the title what the video is, if you don't like it, don't watch it, and/or give it a "thumbs down". If I get enough thumbs down for a particular type of video, I likely won't produce them any more.
    I turn down a lot of gear that I get asked to review because I don't find it interesting enough to me personally.
    Instead of saying what you don’t like, how about being constructive and saying what you do like?

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• tchicago November 18th, 2012 at 10:51

  Hey, David, please keep making the teardowns videos. I’ve had the Anatol’s thoughts in my mind too, but then I figured – this is just entertaining and educational. And I’d rather vote to have these videos to watch than not.

  BTW, please, please try to remove those heatsinks from the big chips. I bet one of each pair is another Xilinx FPGA, and the other one is some custom ADC chip.

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  • EEVblog November 20th, 2012 at 22:23

    The chips are the Megazoom IV ASIC (not an FPGA), and yes, a custom Agilent ADC.

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