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Scope for Diagnostics

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ehcaes:
Looking at using a scope for diagnosing PC hardware, as a way of providing better and more efficient service to my customers and also for hobby use.

Can they be used to determine if a CPU or Motherboard is bad? What else can they test?

Given current CPU speeds does this mean I would need one with a bandwidth of at least 3.5ghz,and at whatever point in the future when faster clock speeds come out it wont be good for CPU testing? Think this would be a great thing to be able to do but as you can tell I don't know much about them to determine if It would be a feasible option. sure if it could find problems with a BGA slot great but if that means I then need a BGA rework station one thing just leads to another....

alm:
How much labor do you spend on a $100 mainboard? Parts exchange is by far the most economical option. PCs are way too complex for component level troubleshooting. For example, I once encountered an issue of a mainboard not having enough decoupling on the reset pin of the CPU, resulting in a too high noise level, triggering a reset once in a while. Do you plan on probing those 775 (or 1155) pins to find it? Can you even get the proper documentation without NDA? Can you get spare parts in reasonable quantities?

bullet308:
IMHO, about the only thing that is practical/cost-effective to do with PC mainboard troubleshooting is look for and replace bulged and blown electrolytic caps. All you need for that is a calibrated Mk. 1 eyeball and perhaps a multimeter, not an o'scope.

ehcaes:

--- Quote from: bullet308 on September 14, 2011, 02:11:46 pm ---IMHO, about the only thing that is practical/cost-effective to do with PC mainboard troubleshooting is look for and replace bulged and blown electrolytic caps. All you need for that is a calibrated Mk. 1 eyeball and perhaps a multimeter, not an o'scope.

I would beg to differ that you can always identify a bad cap by its bulge. Wouldnt say they have to bulge to be bad if in early stages. I do stand corrected if im wrong.

--- End quote ---

--- Quote from: alm on September 14, 2011, 01:16:54 pm ---How much labor do you spend on a $100 mainboard?

--- End quote ---
How long is a piece of string? Motherboard prices vary.
Sure parts exchange can be economical, not always however, for example if I find a busted cap how long is it going to take to replace that vs order and install a new board. its also difficult to have a spare i7 990x to do a swap to determine whats gone bad as rare as it is that a CPU fails.

Can you get spare parts in reasonable quantities? Possibly, however a scope would give me the ability to repair old and difficult to source equipment, sometimes as well people cant wait for parts to arrive. I once had a customer with an old dell and an old form factor PSU I could only source from overseas the weight of the thing alone would have cost a fortune in freight. I didn't have the tools to diagnose the PSU properly. So had to sell him a new PC less his hdds/optical.

Just after a general idea of the whole scope of things really. Another reason is this allows you to offer an extra service to your customer whether it be the quicker turn around, nice diagnostics,. If nothing it lends your business an extra layer of credibility. Something I strive to do.

dimlow:
You seem to have convinced yourself its the right thing to do, go ahead and buy a 3.5 GHz plus scope and shout to your customers you have one, to get the extra sales. Also please send me your contact details so that i can call you in a couple of years when the scope has gathered lots of dust, i will be due for an upgrade by then.

Sure scopes are handy, but really, not for what you are doing. I was IT manager for 15 years for several large company's, never once did I or my engineers need a scope, if you're having to source parts from overseas because you don't have a supplier, you need to expand your contact book, not waste silly money on toys, cos that's all a scope will be for a pc repair engineer.

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