Products > Test Equipment
Old'ish vs New'ish test equipment
Finderbinder:
--- Quote from: bdunham7 on February 05, 2023, 04:46:06 am ---However, I don't really get your statement about 'compatibility with today's technologies' unless you are talking about device communications like GPIB and floppy drives vs USB ports.
--- End quote ---
Exactly. Old communications are useless today. Informative displays are also big advantage of modern equipment (you can see some related parameters at once, no need to fiddle around).
alm:
--- Quote from: Finderbinder on February 05, 2023, 08:41:32 am ---Exactly. Old communications are useless today. Informative displays are also big advantage of modern equipment (you can see some related parameters at once, no need to fiddle around).
--- End quote ---
You're right for consumer equipment, like a camera with Firewire or a parallel port ZIP drive. Test equipment is unique in that the ubiquitous legacy interface GPIB/HPIB/IEEE488 is still well supported, in software and hardware, by both commercial offerings and hobbyist offerings. For example there's an Arduino sketch. You can easily hook up a GPIB instrument to ethernet using VXI-11 and it will be transparently supported by VISA. I'd argue this is easier than networking an USBTMC-only instrument.
The only thing missing is a buggy Windows application to control it ;). But there are alternatives like Test Controller.
AVGresponding:
I paid less than £200 (shipped!) for my 1GHz Tek 784C. Good luck finding a new 1 GHz scope for that money... Likewise all the rest of my TE, including Fluke, Keithley, HPAK DMMs, both bench and handheld, sig gens, power supplies etc. As has been mentioned, GPIB and variants are still well supported, and those don't try to phone home when you plug them into your network...
Even if I won the lottery I wouldn't fill a lab with brand new gear, either from the old names or the new ones, but that suits my use case. Yours is different, so you should choose what gear suits it best. When you're using it in a business, you want good, fast warranty support, since down-time is costing you money.
nctnico:
--- Quote from: Electro Detective on February 05, 2023, 01:31:10 am ---The one time where there can't be too much debate on a piece of troubleshooting gear like a thermal camera/imager, that's a must buy for me (SOON)
that will most likely pay for itself on a handful of PITA diagnose tasks, it would have to be a thermal camera/imager at under $1000,
--- End quote ---
I have a Flir C2 that works fine for troubleshooting. Bought it with a decent discount from Toploser but even at full price it is well worth the money. I have found many problems with it in minutes instead of hours.
AFTORF:
In RF and microwave, old test equipement are cheaper, easy to repair (many with discrete components without SMD) and real complete service manuals are available on the Web.
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