Certainly once it breaks, you will be faced with a broad array of unobtainium parts and boards that are intended to be replaced rather than repaired.
At least it's repairable. I have my doubts as to whether the current cream of the crop test equipment will remain serviceable for as long. Certainly once it breaks, you will be faced with a broad array of unobtainium parts and boards that are intended to be replaced rather than repaired.
At least it's repairable. I have my doubts as to whether the current cream of the crop test equipment will remain serviceable for as long. Certainly once it breaks, you will be faced with a broad array of unobtainium parts and boards that are intended to be replaced rather than repaired.Judging by the TEA thread you could go through a lot of analogue device repairs before you ever run into a digital device one.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.
Going back to the original question, here is my approach for troubleshooting with an oscilloscope:
If I don't have a clue, inititally, what the problem is, I use the analog CRO.
Once I know what's going on, and need to make a measurement or a single-sweep capture, I use the digital unit.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.Sure, while the already diminishing pool of parts mule CRO's still exists. Costs for them are rising as the demand for replacement bits increases.
Certainly once it breaks, you will be faced with a broad array of unobtainium parts and boards that are intended to be replaced rather than repaired.
Yeah, but what's going to break? There's no high voltage, a simple switch-mode supply only a couple of power rails, a single PCB with a handful of chips on it...
A lot of them use standard chips, too. Off the shelf FPGAs, RAM and ADC. Avoiding the ASICs isn't difficult.
Plenty of old boat anchors have custom chips, too.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.Sure, while the already diminishing pool of parts mule CRO's still exists. Costs for them are rising as the demand for replacement bits increases.
Shrug. So what; even where true that does not invalidate my statement. It does tend to reduce the need to buy a new low-end DSO, ....
Besides, why pick on CRTs? There are plenty of other failure mechanisms.
At least it's repairable. I have my doubts as to whether the current cream of the crop test equipment will remain serviceable for as long. Certainly once it breaks, you will be faced with a broad array of unobtainium parts and boards that are intended to be replaced rather than repaired.Judging by the TEA thread you could go through a lot of analogue device repairs before you ever run into a digital device one.
That's because when you have a fault on a modern digital scope, you look at it and realise repair is impractical at best - and give up. With a classic analogue scope you feel that can puzzle out a fault and rectify it. So you do, or at least have a good crack at it.
Guess which is more interesting and satisfying.
Another thing I like about analog CROs: control inputs are immediate, and tactile. I get to spend time with two expensive digital scopes at work...I have a Tek TDS5k series 1 GHz DPO on my desk and there's a Keysight MSO-X 6k down in the lab. While both are amazingly capable, I absolutely despise having to navigate menus to find functions. Plus, control inputs have an annoying amount of latency between input and effect.That's strange as Keysight's Megazoom oscilloscopes are famed for their immediate hardware accelerated response to inputs and not slowing down when more features are enabled. Does the 6K series run an additional "desktop" Windows layer?I don't think it does; when it boots there is zero sign of windows. It absolutely is faster at responding to inputs than the DPO, which runs windows 2k. But I can still feel that it's just not quite as immediate as my analog 'scopes at home. IMO, YMMV.
And then there's the gone but not quite forgotten analogue storage oscilloscopes with variable persistence,
and some lower bandwidth jobs with split screens etc (anyone remember those awesome beasts?)
that fit somewhere between the two above.