Just ordered an HP54501A from ebay. Will it be useful for beginner/starter proje

[Baltic_wh4le]

Hello. Bit of a noob here. Saw a some posts about the HP 54501 here and i want to ask if it will be ok for just normal use and tabletop breadboard projects?

[Andrew_Debbie]

Never used one, but the specs are not good compared to a modern DSO.   

10MS/s   and 500 points of memory is going to be limiting for many uses, especially for any single shot  waveforms.    I'm sure it is interesting from a historic point of view. 

[sokoloff]

It’s slow (in terms of max sampling rate), but if the circuits you’re working on are similarly slow (in terms of bandwidth of signals), it’s fine.

Hopefully you’re not into it for several hundreds of dollars. At a price point of a decent textbook, you’ll probably learn some things and hopefully enjoy it.

[merox]

Hello. Bit of a noob here. Saw a some posts about the HP 54501 here and i want to ask if it will be ok for just normal use and tabletop breadboard projects?

Oh dear, I hope it was cheap or at least came with probes because...

10MS/s and 500 points of memory is going to be limiting for many uses, especially for any single shot  waveforms.  I'm sure it is interesting from a historic point of view. 

I really love the handling and the UI of the 54501A but it's really kind of useless because of its limited sample rate and memory depth. If the signals you're going to probe are well below 1 Mhz it won't be a problem and you'll have a great scope but otherwise it was a complete waste of money from my point of view.

I gladly switched my old 54501A for an even older 54200A because it has a way higher sample rate despite being a 6-bit scope. But since I'm doing mostly digital stuff, that's ok for me.