Products > Test Equipment
Oscilloscope HP 54600A
mio83:
Hi!
I was patiently waiting to save some money to buy an entry level Rigol or Siglent digital oscilloscope (now have a 20Mhz analogue). But I found a seemingly nice offer for a 100Mhz HP 54600A for about 130euro (price can be lowered a bit, I think).
Do you think it's still good value for the money as of today, 2020?
If not, what price you'd happily pay for it?
Im interested in upgrading my 20Mhz oscilloscope mainly to:
1) have a bit more bandwidth, 100Mhz seems the right limit since to get to 200Mhz or above I'd need to start spending money also on probes...
2) To have "one shot" trigger possibilities,
3) To be able to see the the wave before the trigger point.
4) Having some basic measurments directly available (pk-to-pk, frequency, etc).
In other words, I am not interested in the so-many functionalities offered by modern scopes... I am still learning (amateur, not student) and want a relatively "simple" device I can (fell like I) master. Also, I am NOT interested in decoding digital transmissions. More into RF and Ham radio.
So the HP 54600A might be good instrument for these goals. And the build quality should be good.
What do you think?
Thanks!
oPossum:
Be aware the one-shot bandwidth is only 2 MHz for a single channel or 1 MHz for two channels. The ADC runs at 20 MS/s so higher frequencies require ETS (equivalent time sampling) and a repetitive signal.
Wuerstchenhund:
As oPossum says, the 54600A only samples at 20MSa/s (which is sufficient for a bit over 6MHz), which is not enough to cover 100MHz BW in real-time. And because of the low sample rate, your signal will be susceptible to aliasing by frequency components over the Nyquist frequency (10Mhz).
It also has a minuscule amount of sample memory (kpts in real-time, 4k in ETS).
It's OK if you are looking at repetitive signals or for doing some poor man's version of an eye diagram but as a general pupose scope the 54600A is pretty poor.
If you don't want to spend the $350 or so for a new Rigol DS1054z then the HP 54622A/D could be an option if you find one cheap ($150 or so), it has a higher sample rate and more memory (and in case of the "D" it's actually an MOS) and is a decent general purpose scope.
SilverSolder:
+1 for HP 54622D for amateur use.
It is well made, easy to use, and has "modernish" features like being able to export a captured waveform on disk, which you can then use to drive circuit simulations (in LTSpice for example) on your PC. The screen has 1000 pixel horizontal resolution which is better than some modern scopes.
iMo:
I got this scope in my hands yesterday in perfect condition. Spent last night watching the display.. :palm:
Unbelievable what it could do with its 20MS/sec subsampling and its 68000 @8MHz cpu. Tetris is nice to have too :D
Btw., is a service manual "with schematics" somewhere available ??
I've found the user manual with service instructions, but none schematics in there, a pity..
Also, is even possible to see say 100mV 50Hz hum superimposed on say 30MHz 1V sine wave with this gadget (like AM modulation)?
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