I'm a beginner. Would anyone be willing to hazard a guess whether the following might be a good value?
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/ele/6047362204.html
Yes! More emphatic: YES! I would buy that in a heartbeat.
But it's not a DSO so it probably lacks some of the measurement features, single shot capability, serial link decoding, etc.
What would the advantage over a DS1054Z be, which happens to sell at the same price?
(And is much smaller, and is a DSO, and has a color screen to distinguish traces, and can do measurements, decoding...)
Unless you are a collector, I don't think the Tek is "good value" today.
You buy a DSO for features and price. That big old Tek probably cost more than my first house when bought new.
With the DS1054Z, you get 4 channels and I wanted that so I could watch all aspects of the SPI bus (CS',Clk,MISO,MOSI). I already had a 2 channel Tek 485 but I thought that 4 channels would be a lot more useful for certain projects. Of course, I can not only watch the transaction, I can decode it. That also applies to I2c and UART. So, decoding was my second criteria...
I've come to appreciate the Measurements capability: Vp-p, frequency, pulse width and MANY others. The Math features are also pretty handy.
But the thing I really like is the one-shot capability. I take one snapshot and it stays on the screen forever. I can scroll, zoom or just stare at it until I finally get what I wanted. And I can trigger on some truly obscure possibilities.
Although I like analog scopes and the more knobs the better, there is simply no comparison with a DSO. There's a reason that you just about can't buy an analog scope anymore, DSOs have ALL of the advantages.
Don't let anybody tell you that some low bandwidth scope is useful, it isn't. Mostly I work with square waves so I need to display at least the 7th harmonic so even after I open up the 1054 to 100 MHz, it's still only somewhat valid on a 15 MHz square wave. Ideally I would want to display out to the 15th harmonic or so. For this, I have the Tek 485 and it will handle 350 MHz. But it doesn't have ANY features, just bandwidth. Used 485s are in the $250 range on eBay with some wanting a LOT more.
There are some serious limitations to that Tek 4226 but I would buy it anyway (if I didn't have the 485). Look at channels 3 & 4, they don't have V/div knobs. You get 0.1V/div or 0.5V/div (button selectable) which, with a 10x probe, gives you 1V or 5V/div. This is workable and a lot of scopes are built this way. But any way you look at it, those 2 channels are not equivalent to channels 1 & 2.
The better 2446s on eBay are pretty well over $300 but not as high as $390. But, buying locally saves about $50 on freight and, presumably, you can test it out before leaving money behind. If I still lived down in Silicon Gulch, I might look into it. I used to live a mile or so from Saratoga. Alas, I don't live there any longer. And I don't need another scope...
I would think first and foremost about the Rigol DS1054Z. The features of a DSO simply swamp the cool factor of an analog scope. I am not seriously thinking about a new scope (I really don't need one) but that new 2 channel 200 MHz Siglent would be a possibility since it is targeted right at the price of the Rigol. But it's only 2 channels...
There are a lot of people on the EEVblog forum that have the 1054. Most are quite happy, a few are unhappy because it isn't as capable as a $1200 scope. And it isn't! At the edges, the DS1054Z has some limitations that the average user will NEVER encounter.
I guess I shouldn't sound so enthusiastic about the 2446, the 1054Z is the right way to get into the scope game. Much as I like analog scopes, they are a dead issue. The DSOs have too many advantages.