Hi Bicurico, I will make some comments on your post and quote-edit your post to leave the main points
Hi DC1MC,
1) I have followed your frustration and rant on this thread since day one.
2) Buying a spectrum analyzer is not a trivial task, because it is a very expensive equipment. You want to make sure you buy a unit with the required specs and as a hobbyist you want to pay as little as possible.
3) As already mentioned in this forum, one very viable solution is the Siglent SSA3021X, which can easily be hacked to include all measurements, tracking generator and extended bandwidth up to 3.2GHz. You cannot just claim it is Chinese crap. This device performs pretty well for the price and I am not so sure a 10-20 years old SSA will perform any better, despite its eBay price being higher.
4) Also, please note that prices on eBay are high because there is demand. It is a democratic self regulating system!
5) The sellers certainly did not receive those units as free scrap which they only had to collect and sell for a lot of money.
...snip the story of buying 2, keep 1, sell1...
6) I currently have (as described in the relevant thread) a Keyseight E4403B to repair. It has a broken power supply. Well, hopes are not totally at zero, yet. But I learned that there is NO INFORMATION at all regarding the power supply (shared by many spectrum analyzer frm HP, Agilent and Keysight). So if you get a reasonable deal on those and the power supply breaks (it will at some point in time), you are screwed.
7) Importing from the US: you will have trouble with customs. Shipping is really expensive. If you know someone in the US and you happen to go to the US or you know someone who goes there, you or this person cold bring the device personally. The problem is that these devices are HEAVY! I tried this route, but gave up. How can you possibly ask someone to bring you a spectrum analyzer with a minimum weight of 15kg in hand luggage?
The CMU200/CRTU: these do NOT feature a tracking generator. But they offer a pretty great spectrum analyzer. Because there are many on the market, you seem to get good access to spare parts. Also, there is considerable information on how to repair common faults, generate required activation keys, replace HDD, etc. But, repairing and maintaining such a device is not that easy. Note that most people here are pretty deep into electronics and repair. It seems easy when you read it, but just getting access to a RXTX board will take more than an hour the first time you try!
9) Another thing: you won't be able to write your own DOS software for the CMU200/CRTU. As has been said in different threads, most of the magic happens inside the different modules. The PC module acts only as a frontend.
...skip my options...
Regards,
Vitor
OK, here are my comments:
1) It's nice that someone empathizes, maybe I'll subscribe to this thread as well
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2) This is obvious, for 2K EUR you buy in Germany a very usable car.
3) I have a friend working at <frigging large telco equipment manufacturer with R&D in Eastern Europe>, the bean-counters decided that the peons there does not need any Agilent and R&S SA, but gave them the love of of this forum that you've mentioned. The results pipeline stopped to a screech, two frustrated (alpha geeks) guys quit immediately and the junk was promptly returned and replaced with proper devices. It seems that the tablet strapped to a mediocre signal board didn't had what was needed, even if it produces nice colored pictures.
Personally I don't understand what is the target market of these things, so far they seem to have failed to capture any significant industrial/R&D market and only have some marginal following in the academic and (rich) hobbyist community, or else the little heist with "unlock the 3GHz range" would have come to an abrupt stop, with a rain of take down notices and DMCA crap. Along with FPGA encoded keys / rootfs encryption and better protection methods. Rigol kind of give up and market their SA attempt to IoT enthusiasts and when the price will come down to under 1K EUR, not around 2K as it is now in DE, I will consider it, not sooner.
4) Each one is entitled to an opinion, mine is that there is an artificial made scarcity ( like with the diamonds and Apple phones during launching), I meet briefly one of those used equipment sellers and sorry for painting with a big brush, but they seem to be in the same moral height of the used cars sellers, exceptions notwithstanding.
5) [citation needed]
6) There are really way worse things than a broken power supply, I will consider myself ultra-lucky to get a powerful (semi-modern)SA with a broken power supply. A broken custom ASIC, a broken logic board with obscure CPU and no NVRAM/SRAM content to be found, a broken ultra-wide-band amplifier implemented as an special order transistor on a ceramic section or other unobtanium parts, these are real tragedies.
A broken power-supply is as JACKPOT
as it can be, except bad fuses and having the trigger mode enabled, it can't be better than this.
Sorry, I try not to sound as a pompous a-hole, but who considers a broken power-supply an actual issue in repairing high-end high-frequency complex instruments, it should not attempt doing it.
7) Importing form US/Israel is not actually feasible in Germany, here I agree 169%, except for extraordinary good deals, but I've yet to encounter one.
8-9) Hmm, it will not happen very soon (no beefy CMU200 on horizon for me), and it's clearly not as simple as I made it to be, but CMU200 has a lot of possibilities, of course one needs a rather fully featured unit, with signal generator option at minimum, no I will not generate/read signals form DOS
and the magic will remain in the signal boards, just the front end stuff will be modified to implement new functionality, the modules are actually capable of more, but nobody had any interest in doing it. And actually the set made of the intersection of people that can still reverse some DOS/early Windows drivers/low level stuff and the people that knows that it is/cares/have interest in SAs and measurement instruments and the ones that have time for it and also not enough money to just buy their toys, could very well approach the empty set.
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Now my answer is as long as your post, so I'll stop here
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Cheers, DC1MC