A little later than promised, I can now show you the photos of the tds210 and the diff probe. The scope has cleaned up really well, looks almost new as does the diff probe, which only came with the connecting BNC lead, so used some of my plentiful supply of meter leads to make a complete setup that is usable.
When I saw this item for sale (not eBay) it had all the warning signs flashing at me telling me to keep away from it, poorly presented, not photographed working, insufficient details etc. and yet I was inexplicably drawn to it, I think maybe it was the diff probe, although the photo was so poor that I was unable to extract any info from it do a web search for details etc.
The seller was asking £200 or offers so I offered £150, what I thought would be the going rate for something was (although he did say it was working, but we have all been there before when we shouldn't
) not shown working. My offer was declined but was not going to increase it because of the uncertainties. A few days went by and the seller contacted me stating that he had other offers all with the same figure but seeing as I was first to reply to the advert, if I was still interested I could have it at that. First gut reaction is this a con? Never been approached like that before so was a bit wary as you can imagine. I asked if he could photograph it working for me, and he did, so I said cautiously, I was in if we could get a shipping cost organised, which duly arrived the next day and I accepted it.
Then onto the payment stakes which was a right shambles, his PayPal address gave me all kinds of problems claiming that the seller only accepted payment via his website, which he claimed he didn't have a website, at this stage I was just to call a halt to the whole process as I was getting even more suspicious that it was turning out to be con, that’s when he said that I could perhaps transfer the money directly to his bank account, this made the alarm bells ring really loud in my head and TBH if it was not for the lure of that diff probe, I would have. He gave me his account details but the transaction would not go through, get telling me that the details were incorrect so I rang the bank to find out what was wrong. They told me the sort code was incorrect, so back I go to the seller and asked him to double check the info he gave me and he replied that he had given me the wrong sort code
which sort of reassured me as he had confirmed what the bank told me. Anyway, payment through and he confirmed that he received the payment and that he would dispatch it the following morning to me.
The following day I got a text message telling me that he had sent it 1st class on an overnight so I would get the following day, still I had little niggles, what if he has done the same thing with the others that had offered the same amount... would I be getting parcel with a brick in it?
The following day, parcel duly arrived, opened it up and was relieved to find everything was there, my fears had so far proved to be groundless. Then I noticed the supplied probes never had the grabbers or the earth lead and croc clips with them. Contacted seller who did a look for them and confirmed that he couldn't find them.
Switched on the scope and if worked OK, did the same with the diff probe, dead. Replaced the battery and the LED came on, hopes were raised once again, connected it and found some meter leads, plugged them and bingo it worked, so all in all not a bad deal after all, despite all the problems along the path.
Edit:
Notice the increase noise floor however with the diff probe set on 200X range, I suspect that would not the case when dealing with a greater input voltage other then the 5v PP test signal?