Keysight to launch new oscilloscope

[Hydrawerk]

Is this new scope going to replace the DSOX2000 and DSOX3000 series from 2011?

[Electro Detective]

[...]  if I pay 10x the price of a chinese instrument?  [...]

Surely that is the key to the mystery...   If a throwaway instrument is sold at throwaway prices, presumably few would mind.

The day will come when you can subscribe to an oscilloscope with fixed monthly payments, just like we see subscription models for everything else nowadays...

"DSO 360" ?  or old school 'LEASE' ? 

I doubt the coronafied corpo-spenders will blow big money on these things any time soon, and keep rolling with whatever still works

The manufacturers (if they haven't gone belly up too) may have to consider expressions of interest from prospect upgraders
and offer "DSO 360"   or old school 'LEASE' with option to buy, and trade up sweeteners etc 

[wolfy007]

I know the the DSO9000A series is about to be discontinued, wonder if the new release has something to do with that?

[dzseki]

Those Teks weren't any cheaper in their day. Without new test gear there is no old test gear. Who cares you can't afford it?

Things back then were build well, designed for reliability, had schematics and firmware published or EPROMs could be dumped and average joe could repair it with commonly available parts. That's why they are still around.

Stuff nowadays will be broken beyond repair, if it even gets anywhere near as old as these classic Teks before hitting the dumpster.
If I want crap that can't be repaired, I get some junk from china. At least it's at a price where I could throw it into the dumpster without much regret once it's broken. And a new one most likely costs less than a repair evaluation at KS.

That's why I don't care.

I love to tinker with older gear too, and I am definitely a cheapstake person. But I don't think you are right. The HP 1720A scope I have for example came out in 1974 and is already full with ASICs for critical stages. Even the common jelly-bean components have only custom HP part numbers printed on them. The only thing why these things are somewhat repairable now is because you can find spare parts and cross reference tables on the INTERNET. But repairing these say in 1980 at hobby level was about as hopeless as for current instruments nowadays.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Sure, there is some survivorship bias involved (for example, most HP 8xxx pulse generators were garbage IMO) but with the throwaway instruments they make nowadays, hardly anything will be left in 40 years.

Either because configuration from PLD or microcontroller EPROMs leaks empty and no way to recover. Or it looses calibration and no public info on how to calibrate. Without schematics, even something simple can fail and you can't repair, because you don't realize it's broken, without the insights a good schematic provides. So why no schematics, service and calibration info now, if I pay 10x the price of a chinese instrument?

The better scopes/logic analyzers back then were all modular, Tek 7k, 11k, HP 54750..., makes an instrument much more versatile and it's simple to replace the frontend, once something breaks down. Makes diagnostics simpler as well, than the 1board garbage we have nowadays. Why not today, make 1 good instrument with different plugins instead of 10, each artificially crippled in a different way? And split things up onto different boards, so things can be tested by swapping them. Once a moderately complex board is identified as broken, parts level repair usually isn't that hard, in case the manufacturer would provide the parts.

That are some really rose-tinted glasses you have there  Because in reality a lot of old kit was pretty repair-intensive.

Because I'm a lazy person and this very topic just recently came up in another thread I'd like to point you to my reply there:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/analog-vs-digital-scope/msg3013596/#msg3013596

In short, old kit has often been very maintenance and repair intensive (and modular instruments were particularly bad, the Tek 7000 Series of scopes was a real royal pain in the ass, with the worst reliability of any scope I have ever seen over the decades), something hobbyists often ignore, and when they then get some old instrument and it doesn't fail under their low-duty workload they talk it up as some miraculous superiority which is silly.

Modern kit is, in general, a lot more reliable than the old gear, and there are no reasons why even a cheap $350 Rigol DS1054z can't be working fine 20 or more years down the road, and very likely will do so without needing any repairs.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Modern kit is, in general, a lot more reliable than the old gear, and there are no reasons why even a cheap $350 Rigol DS1054z can't be working fine 20 or more years down the road, and very likely will do so without needing any repairs.

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor.  For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

[Wuerstchenhund]

[...]
Modern kit is, in general, a lot more reliable than the old gear, and there are no reasons why even a cheap $350 Rigol DS1054z can't be working fine 20 or more years down the road, and very likely will do so without needing any repairs.

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor. 

Well, "fun" is something that I'm sure is pretty high priority in a hobbyist's mind. Which, at the end of the day, is because there isn't really any urgency or real importance on what they do, it's a hobby after all.

For professional use the most important things are that the test instrument helps me to solve a specific problem, reliably, and without getting in the way.

For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

As a second car for the occasional fun ride on a sunny weekend? Sure. But frankly if I have to go on a business trip or commute I'd take a modern car like a Prius which is simply a lot safer, more comfortable and a lot more economical.

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

There's nothing wrong with enjoying vintage test gear, and some of the instruments are really remarkable because of what they achieved when technology was a lot more primitive than today.

But you shouldn't get carried away into thinking that old kit which you use for your hobby must be a lot better or even more durable than test equipment made today. Because that would be delusion

[jjoonathan]

I always try to appreciate things for what they are and avoid judging them for what they aren't, if I can. It always seems that if I spend energy looking for negatives, I find them -- but if I spend that same energy looking for positives, I also find them, and then I am happy rather than grumpy. YMMV, naturally, but it pays to remember that cynicism and optimism can be self-fulfilling.


My VNA is from the 80s -- It takes four switch flips to turn on, each is satisfyingly clunky, each starts a noisy fan that sounds like it's preparing for takeoff, the RF source has an angry red character display, and the GUI is text-on-black, running bare metal. Everything about it feels "old school, big iron" and that's fun! Having schematics was super helpful to fix it. On the other hand, if it had been modern, it wouldn't weigh 200 pounds, the DRAM problem would have been trivial (RAM check fail -> swap a $5 DIMM) rather than an exercise in tracing circuits, if it would even have happened because modern DRAM gets better testing, cleaning up the buttons would have meant scrubbing down a blister pad vs picking the previous owner's crusty smoothy remains out of 30 buttons and modeling + printing 3 plastic base things, and the PLL issue would probably have involved swapping a standard ADI component rather than tracing down an unobtainium HP divider chip and guessing + emulating the voltage levels and functionality. Rather than resent it for being (literally) old and crusty I'd rather focus on the fact that its problems made it affordable and that operating it feels like (I imagine) driving a submarine from the movies.

My oscilloscope is from 2010 -- it takes a minute and a half to boot, it accrues a security vulnerability or two per year, it has windows update on it, there are no available schematics, and I got it at a much smaller discount than I got the VNA. Ew. But its hardware problems (broken encoder, broken touch screen, intermittent USB to front panel controller, too little RAM+HDD to update) were all solvable without schematics, it's super responsive, it has a large touch screen, it does a million waveforms per second, hundreds of millions of history points, fancy triggers, fancy decodes, responsive FFTs, loads of bandwidth, good bandwidth -> vertical resolution filter, histograms, masks, zones in time and frequency domain, zooms, it speaks ethernet and USB, I was easily able to update it with RAM, SSD, operating system, apps (Dropbox), speech recognition ("RTO, single capture!"), and a wireless keyboard that it was never designed to work with, it does a cute fan rev when I start it, and it has bright delicious RGB buttons. There are a few things to hate, but there are far more to love. I mean, look at it:



2.4-2.5GHz

Tracking an intermittent sampler issue

Fixed

This thing makes me joyful every time I use it, and you'd have to be a hard-core cynic to not feel the same, IMO. Even back when I had a Rigol, there was a lot to love, and there were a number of things that brought me joy on a daily basis. USB, Ethernet, wfm/s -- even the blister pad, which also had smoothie in it, but was easy to wash, contrast with VNA above. Modern scopes are great.

(Whoops, I forgot that I was a keysight shill for a second, nevermind what I said, Rigol will make your gf cheat on you, R&S scopes are terrible and will give you cancer, coronavirus, and 5G, 0/10, do not buy, Bill and Dave plz forgive    )

Really, though, there's a lot to love in these newer scopes, so let's focus on what could be!

* Better ADC. More GSa! More GHz! More bits! More SFDR! More! More! More!

* Simultaneously having more memory depth than a goldfish and lots of wfm/s

* Nice STFFTs, like on the R&S scope above.

* Frequency domain zone triggers, like on the R&S scope, but always running, rather than merely in captures.

** Still won't cannibalize RTSA sales because SFDR -- at least until Shahriar releases a youtube tutorial teaching the world how to build a 100GHz 24 bit ENOB ADC

* Sharp enclosure design, like on the newer keysight SAs -- you know, the anodized black/gray aluminum sheet (I think -- it's shiny to the eye and cool + rough to the touch, is the point) + honeycomb + sharp red-on-black graphics. Wow, those are nice. Someone else in the lab has one and it makes me envious even though I have like 10x the GHz in my SA. Cast aluminum and chipping beige paint is just no match.

* Cloud notebook? Pasting screenshots into Word makes me feel like a boomer.

* RGB RGB RGB!!!

* Pushing a few infiniium S series off the grocery shelf and into the hobby hacking price bracket, please and thank you :-)

[SilverSolder]

We should really start a separate thread, dedicated to the "feel" of taking cool equipment for a test drive!

If two pieces of equipment have the same features, and one is cool/fun to use, and the other is not...  all else being equal, would it influence your buying decision? - I think it would, for a lot of people.

[tszaboo]

"This Keysight scope will help you push the performance of your digital and high-speed serial designs."
So aimed at high speed digital. S series is Infiniium.

[Electro Detective]

Selling out the cro luddite movement for a moment...     that new Keysight scope would look good rack mounted in a mini lab with mini bar fitted to a 1970 Pontiac GTO

Trying some measurements and scrolling through the menus to get familiar with it during a traffic jam, sure beats listening to the retard radio

Then again, there are no traffic jams any more, all the jammers are self detained at home till further notice,
lest they spread their sniffles and shopping trolley handle grime, to someone else overseas, via grimey airport/boat luggage handles and zips

Do any big dollar DSOs come with rack mount options?   
or stacking is still the go with DSOs with gaffa tape or bungee cords to keep the towers from coming down during an earthquake
or a cat climb to higher ground expedition gone south     

[Mr. Scram]

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor.  For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

Launch yourself a couple of times in a fast Tesla, any Tesla and tell us the future isn't fun. They'll beat the pants off that Pontiac and will tickle you in all the right places while doing it.

[SilverSolder]

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor.  For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

Launch yourself a couple of times in a fast Tesla, any Tesla and tell us the future isn't fun. They'll beat the pants off that Pontiac and will tickle you in all the right places while doing it.

Well, yes and no.  There is something charming about the older, noisier technology.  People still enjoy riding horses...

[stafil]

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor.  For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

Launch yourself a couple of times in a fast Tesla, any Tesla and tell us the future isn't fun. They'll beat the pants off that Pontiac and will tickle you in all the right places while doing it.

Well, yes and no.  There is something charming about the older, noisier technology.  People still enjoy riding horses...

But nobody(?) uses a horse for his daily commute..

[maginnovision]

Well that's not true.

[Electro Detective]

fwiw I'd rather take my chances tinkering with the Pontiac if it claps out in the middle of nowhere
rather than a 2020 smart car that dies and stays into stubborn mule mode just because it can 

[SilverSolder]

Let's not overlook the "fun to use" factor.  For example:  you step out of your house in the morning and start your car.  What is the user experience of starting a 2020 Prius Plugin,  vs. a 1970 Pontiac GTO with the 455 HO engine, to begin your journey?

Using older equipment with big clunky mechanical switches can be just plain more fun and entertaining than a touchscreen enabled modern super efficient device.  No?

Launch yourself a couple of times in a fast Tesla, any Tesla and tell us the future isn't fun. They'll beat the pants off that Pontiac and will tickle you in all the right places while doing it.

Well, yes and no.  There is something charming about the older, noisier technology.  People still enjoy riding horses...

But nobody(?) uses a horse for his daily commute..

Sadly, I don't have a Pontiac GTO Judge to commute in - but if I did, I would!   I know someone who commutes in a Mustang Shelby GT 350 - he is rarely late for work! 

And that tachometer built into a hood scoop...   does a Prius (or even a Tesla) have that?  Nuff said! 

[Mechatrommer]

Modern kit is, in general, a lot more reliable than the old gear, and there are no reasons why even a cheap $350 Rigol DS1054z can't be working fine 20 or more years down the road, and very likely will do so without needing any repairs.

my Rigol DS1052E needed repairing on the rotary knobs after few (2-3) years of light use. and now its screen failed (after 8-10 years) due to stripped off or broken down polarizer layer on top of it. dont have time to repair and dont have urgent need since DS1054Z is in use now. i remember people reporting corrupted FW, garbage screen etc on DS1054Z. there are few, if not many reasons why it cant work. on the good side, it doesnt cost 10X as Agilents' do.

[dzseki]

On the other hand I think no one would say no if the boss would came in the lab at work and say: " Hey, we have some extra money we can buy you a new scope if you want.

[Mr. Scram]

Well, yes and no.  There is something charming about the older, noisier technology.  People still enjoy riding horses...

I brought my horse to the drag strip. The horse was not amused. Didn't do a very good time either. She made a lot of noise though. 2/10 experience.

[Mechatrommer]

Well, yes and no.  There is something charming about the older, noisier technology.  People still enjoy riding horses...

I brought my horse to the drag strip. The horse was not amused. Didn't do a very good time either. She made a lot of noise though. 2/10 experience.

talking about wrong tool in the wrong place. try again on a hilly place with lots of potholes, grasses and stones, it must be happy. having said that, i'm not a fan of hiking either so i dont need a horse... so far.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Modern kit is, in general, a lot more reliable than the old gear, and there are no reasons why even a cheap $350 Rigol DS1054z can't be working fine 20 or more years down the road, and very likely will do so without needing any repairs.

my Rigol DS1052E needed repairing on the rotary knobs after few (2-3) years of light use. and now its screen failed (after 8-10 years) due to stripped off or broken down polarizer layer on top of it. dont have time to repair and dont have urgent need since DS1054Z is in use now. i remember people reporting corrupted FW, garbage screen etc on DS1054Z. there are few, if not many reasons why it cant work. on the good side, it doesnt cost 10X as Agilents' do.

That's unfortunate but in the great scheme of things irrelevant as it's just a single data point, and while I'm not familiar with the DS1052E I haven't heard or read any reports about widespread issues with DS1052E screens failing. With any complex product there is always a certain percentage which will be trouble-prone or fail prematurely.

This however doesn't negate the point that, in general, modern test equipment really is a lot more reliable than kit from the old days.

The other thing is that you know of the problem with your DS1052E because you had it from new, and if you decide to repair it then the scope may well be trouble free for many years to come. So if you repair it and then give it away, the new owner may well think that this particular scope must be really reliable because he didn't see that it already had to be repaired when it was still in your possession.

That is essentially what happens when hobbyists get old test instruments.

[SilverSolder]

Hobbyists can learn an awful lot from fixing their own test equipment.  The older stuff generally has comprehensive manuals, often with theory of operation and circuit diagrams that makes it possible to learn from them.  I would say the markedly poorer documentation is the main "failing" of newer equipment.

[Pinkus]

I know the the DSO9000A series is about to be discontinued, wonder if the new release has something to do with that?

My guess would be too in the Infinuum DS9000 range. If you enhance the one and only existing picture a bit, the real depth of the housing is visible and this depth and the left leg supports this guess.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Hobbyists can learn an awful lot from fixing their own test equipment.

Sure they can. As they can when fixing any other complex piece of electronics.

The older stuff generally has comprehensive manuals, often with theory of operation and circuit diagrams that makes it possible to learn from them.  I would say the markedly poorer documentation is the main "failing" of newer equipment.

Not everything old has "comprehensive manuals", in fact for a lot of old devices documentation is actually pretty poor. Quite often you have to re-construct the schematics from following traces and investigate to find out what specific components do.

And it's not true that modern equipment is necessarily less well documented, just that often the documentation is not freely available (which isn't different back then when service manuals were often optional, paid-for items that were only given out to dedicated repair facilities or calibration labs).

Many modern instruments still have extensive service documentation, which includes Theory of Operation as well as schematics. And even for cheap instruments like a Rigol DS1052E, a lot of documentation can be found with the component manufacturers.

But yes, reading manuals can be tremendously instructive, even if you don't own the actual instrument.