Tektronix 1230 Logic Analyzer Review

[mdanh2002]

Hi,

I purchased a Tektronix 1230 Logic Analyzer from eBay almost a year ago. Took a few months for me to find the proper probe (P6444) for a reasonable price from eBay. I spent some time playing with the logic analyzer capabilities and wrote a full review of the unit here:

http://minhdanh2002.blogspot.sg/2014/10/tektronix-1230-logic-analyzer.html

The article also describes a tool that I wrote to emulate a parallel port printer so that screenshots and memory dump can be retrieved from this logic analyzer, which only has parallel and serial port interface.

At 2K data points memory size with up to 64 input channels (mine only has 16 channels as I only purchased 1 P6444 probe), I must say that this device is still very useful nowadays to debug older 8-bit designs, such as the Z80 processors.

Interestingly, this logic analyzer can also interpret captured data as ASCII. I managed to make it display "Hello World" in the captured data by outputting the string to an entire port on a PIC microcontroller and using the synchronous timebase to capture the output.

The device also has monochrome composite video output, which displays just fine on my CRT TV and LCD monitor.

Some screenshots of the logic analyzers, the probe's internal circuit board and the video output are attached to this thread.

Let me know what you think of my review