I'm eyeing at a variety of Tek 6-7GHz scopes, in particular the TDS6604, TDS6804, TDS7704. I'm mainly looking for the bandwidth, 20S/s sampling rate (off a TCA-SMA adapter, or when probing using 4GHz active probes). I have a 500MHz MSO already that's perfect for all things microcontroller related, so this is more for hunting down specific problems and general investigations around fast logic (LVC/AHC/AUC), eye diagrams, striplines, LVDS, gbe, and USB 2 HS. Although I'd love USB 3 SS this probably isn't realistic. And of course, fixing and performance verifying various T&M gear. The Teks seem to be available generally in the $5-$8k range depending on options. I need advanced triggers more than I need update rates, so while these generally have mediocre update rates it looks like they do have all I would need in terms of triggers and analysis/measurements. I realize the 20GS/s rate is interleaved in channel pairs. Ditto memory.
The 6804 has an analog 7GHz bandwidth, but seems able to undo rolloff with a DSP filter... is this meaningful or hoakey? Still, 7GHz BW is fine by me although I'm not sure I'd pay a whole lot more for it than 6GHz. But the addition of other differences may make the 6804/7704 worth the extra coin.
Lots and lots of questions...
Anyone else have experience with these?
The 6604 is based on WinXP, the 7704 on Win2k so I assume the former also has more recent hardware?
Is there a performance difference (other than bandwidth) between the 6604 and 6804?
What are common problems - backup batteries, NVRAM, inputs, special ASICs...?
Has anyone liberated these, since I assume Tek no longer sells SW options?
I'd get a couple of TCA-SMA adapters and a couple of 4GHz active probes, plus a couple of passive ones with attenuation sensing. Anything to be vary of here?
People seem to swap out the HDDs for SSDs, something I'd want to do, and make a backup image of the system on my NAS in the process. I assume given the era it wants an IDE drive? Can it use an SATA adapter?
All have ethernet, and being windows I assume they can save screenshots and data straight to my NAS, so floppy (6604) vs CD (6804) makes no difference to me.
Anything else I should be aware of? There's a shortage of teardowns, discussion, and critical reviews of these online...
These seem reasonably common out there, but not common enough to take one on as a repair project I think. Just not enough parts.