High end scope advice for a kid?

[QuantumPhys]

Of course your nose can come in pretty handy at times too.

Added! They are 2000 vintage, but still work quite well!

[pickle9000]

Mines a great deal older than yours but can still detect "Magic Smoke".

[MrsR]

Dave gives pretty good advice, He helped me out and he was right, Although I wish he had answered my last question.
I would go around the local workshops and don't forget the Airport as they may have RADAR Engineers there ask look try their gear you will be surprised how much they will help you if you let them and don't be a know it all. Just ask for help and they will go out of their way to assist you. MSO would be better than a DSO, we have computers for holding information. You will need a Signal or function Generator as much as a Scope and other Gear will be needed power supplies multimeters ESRs, LCRs. don't be blinded by one ultimate bit of gear as you will find that other thing is needed just as bad.
I have been telling my son these things and now that he is 26 he said I wish I had listened to you mum.
That was yesterday LOL.  May be Dave can teach you to dumpster dive There has been a lot of advice some good some really good, so sit back take it in, make a list then sit back again and work out just what you need not want.

REMEMBER HAVE FUN
Rachael

PS. just get the best lot of gear you can afford. and no I'm going to win Lotto next

[David Hess]

If you try to measure small pulses with a low repetition rate you'll quickly discover that peak detect is invaluable.

I never had a problem measuring LPRF pulses, there are various ways to do this (i.e. segmented memory, deviation trigger) without the need for PD.

I've last used PD over ten years ago, but this was on a low memory Tek scope, and only on a few rare occasions.

Do you have a specific example (test case) where PD would provide an essential advantage with a modern day scope?

Often I use peak detect as an sanity check for spurious oscillations and glitches which would tend to be aliased at low time/div settings.  A long record length would help but is not as unambiguous.  Even an acquisition record length orders of magnitude longer than the display record will limit sample rates at slow time/div settings.

DPO style oscilloscopes may do even better by generating a histogram during acquisition allowing a graded display record instead of an envelope.

Another advantage over a long record length is that peak detection (or a DPO histogram) operates during acquisition so it need not slow down the waveform acquisition rate do to processing long acquisition record for display.  Even modern and expensive Tektronix MSO/DPO 5000 series oscilloscopes suffers from this.

A long record length and segmented memory are indispensable when needed of course so why settle for some when you can have them all?

[David Hess]

Besides the advantage of performance for a given cost, there is a lot to be learned by refurbishing used test equipment assuming service documentation is available.

If I were buying a new oscilloscope, I would look for a lower end model that includes DPO functionality like a Tektronix MSO2000 or MSO3000 or their equivalents made by other manufacturers.

[jpb]

while my grandparents would prefer me to do quantum computing (which would, probably, still involve RF and digital).

This is off topic, but as I teach Quantum Computation as part of Computer Science I thought I'd make a couple of comments.

Quantum computation falls into the theory and practice.

The main theory is based on quantum gates and involves some really clever and fun algorithms but is really mainly maths with a little physics - this is the stuff I teach.

The practical side falls into two camps - one is people trying to build quantum gates which is mainly quantum physics/optics/very cold electrons and the other is D-wave who have produced a quantum computer which doesn't take the quantum gate approach at all and is more like a quantum version of an analogue computer. The D-wave computer is rather controversial as people can't agree as to whether it really works in a quantum way at all. ( http://www.dwavesys.com )

Though quantum computers/computing is fun and may be the future I wouldn't advise it as an end goal. Go into physics if that interests you and you may find yourself doing research into quantum computers. On the electronics side there isn't much in the way of connection between quantum computation and the sort of electronics you currently do.

[Hydrawerk]

No, Tektronix MSO2000 is an obsolete product from 2008. The specs are rather poor. No Trigger output. A low resolution screen.

[David Hess]

No, Tektronix MSO2000 is an obsolete product from 2008. The specs are rather poor. No Trigger output. A low resolution screen.

The MSO2000 is just an example of what I would look for.

About the only feature I could really take advantage of in a new oscilloscope is phase/magnitude FFT.

[Rigby]

of course his parents don't want him to be an EE. They want him to become an APP writer. Or a potato salad peddler on kickstarter.

Those make as much as an EE , except they do it in 1 day ...

what has the world become to

I am going to buy a remote tropical island, build me a secret lab there and the rest of the world can go to hell. There is no hope for the human race.

Anyone that's doing something for the money is doing it for the wrong reason.  Period.  I don't care what it is, or what they money is, it's the wrong reason.

Besides, everyone knows, or has plenty of evidence to conclude correctly, that those closest to the money get the greatest share.  Engineers are not at all close to the customer, therefore they are not at all close to the high incomes.  Sales and distribution is where the money is.  Company leadership.  Lawyers.  The closer you are to the point where money changes hands, the larger your share of the money will be. 

The truth of it is that CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CTOs, customers, sales, virtually everyone except engineers put engineering at the bottom of the pile of importance.  That doesn't mean that engineers are the least important, it means that engineers are perceived as being one of the least important parts of a company.  If you don't believe me, then compare an engineer's salary to that of a small town animal control officer.  They're about the same, except in cases like free_electron, where he's someone who is vetted and trusted, and even he makes less than the mayor of the small town I grew up in with a population of 2500.

The amount of money you will earn is highly dependent on how difficult it will be to replace you, and how close you are to the money.