Did I break my Oscilloscope?

[tayexdrums]

Here is a video of it...

[allanw]

Oh cmon that's barely perceptible! Haha. Nice crisp trace you got there though.

[DJPhil]

Oh cmon that's barely perceptible! Haha. Nice crisp trace you got there though.

I agree, my old 465B is twice that bad, but it's a lot better when it warms up for ten minutes.

I can see how it'd be alarming if it wasn't like that before measuring mains, but I don't think you've got much to worry about really.

[tayexdrums]

Well I think its quite perceptible.lol
I'll do the compass test and everything.
thanks=]

[allanw]

Also try asking here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TekScopes/ and post a good picture. These guys really know their stuff, even if your scope isn't actually a Tektronix.

[DJPhil]

Well I think its quite perceptible.lol
I'll do the compass test and everything.
thanks=]

No worries, I was just surprised. I expected worse, so it was reassuring to see that worst case you're still doing better than my scope!

[RayJones]

LOL, the ubiquitous Rigol 1052E shows more noise than the amount that trace is deflected.

I'm trying to understand the problem now.

In terms of magnetism effects, you could try the trace at the top and bottom of the screen. There is more chance for magnetic field to impart nonsense with the trace up high.

As for degaussing wands, yep anything from the early 19th century would be as good as anything you'd buy these days, the technology is not that complex, just a winding activated by the mains to do as alluded to before, scramble the magnetic field.
It is important however to only release power from the wand when it is quite some distance from the CRO.

A you tube video of the CRO being degaussed whilst turned on would be much more worthy of distorted traces!

[nickmorano777]

The way that you connected the probes is a dead short! Never connect the ground to a hot of any kind! The ground probe always goes to ground, and never connect the ground to the hot or the neutral. 

[nyo]

I've done the same thing  before while in school. I had a plc training board that I decided to probe the 120v to 24v transformer with a oscilloscope. I did the same thing, I connected the probe ground to hot and the probe tip to ground by mistake, fortunately the plc board had a 5A circuit breaker that tripped before any damage was done, the oscilloscope seemed fine after.