Hi rdl. That's exactly what happened. The CAL where the probe attaches to is wonky and wobbly (I'm assuming that it shouldn't be as loose as it is). I finally have a waveform but I had to wiggle it until I found a consistency. I did check it with my DMM but I had a brain fart somewhere.
tautech, rdl, thanks so much for your help. I now can finish checking out the rest of the scope. I really want to master this because I have a few projects to work on (See pictures) to get my feet wet, plus I'll be needing it for school until I get my Rigol. You guys are "The Bees Knees"! Thanks again.
Another thing to fix.
You can see from the image it appears to be a 10:1 probe but it still needs some compensation adjustment to square up the display, then you're good to go.
Now you know what it should look like think of the probe Cal output as your first sanity check when you don't understand what's going on.
Now the Cal output is a
nominal 200mV p-p (this scope) @ 1KHz, notice the word nominal, they are very rarely exact but they serve the probe Cal purpose well.
Take some time to get your head around probe divisions of which there are numerous, 1:1, 10:1 and 100:1 are the most common. As the division increases
normally so does the voltage rating of the probe, but reciprocal to the very important applied capacitance of the probe when applied to a DUT. Simply, all measurements in some way affect the actual measurement value in a DUT.
For this reason use 10:1 probes for all your work unless you need the increased sensitivity a 1:1 probe provides but at the cost of increased capacitive loading on the DUT and lower voltage rating.
When you get other probes, also study their graphs that show how voltage ratings diminish with frequency.
Don't push probe and ch input ratings, err well on the side of caution for your own safety and that of your instrument.
Have fun now you have new eyes to see what's happening.