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| Why did Tektronix stop making the great scopes? |
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| Wuerstchenhund:
--- Quote from: HighVoltage on December 24, 2014, 10:27:02 pm ---There was another player in the scope market in the mid 90th. It was Philips (Later Fluke) with the Combiscope that could switch by the push of a button from analog to digital. And these Combiscopes offered more in features and bandwidth and memory and clearness of the CRT than any other scope on the market. --- End quote --- Certainly not. The top of the line of the Combiscopes was the PM3394B which offered a mere 200MHz and 200MSa/s with 32k sample memory, and this was at around 1999. At the same time there were scopes like the HP 54542C (500MHz 2GSa/s, 32kpts and color LCD) or the LeCroy 9384AL (1GHz 4GSa/s 8Mpts) or LC 684DXL (1.5GHz 8Gsa/s 16Mpts), all which were far more advanced than the simple Combiscopes. And then there were scopes like the HP 54752A which went to 50Ghz. There were plenty of scopes that offered more features, bandwidth and memory than the Combiscopes. --- Quote ---This must have hurt Tek and HP big time in those days. --- End quote --- Again, not really. The Combiscopes were great scopes (we had several of them at that time and most engineers preferred them over Tek analog scopes) but at the end of the day they were not much better than an old analog scope. The screen was tiny and basic when the competition already had color LCDs and better GUIs, and the maths and measurement capabilities were pretty basic even back then. These Combiscopes didn't hurt HP and Tek because when the CombiScopes were made analog scopes were already a dead end, and HP and Tek focused their efforts on the DSO which was clearly the way forward. |
| dannyf:
--- Quote ---Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? --- End quote --- Disruptive technology advances, from analog to digital, more specifically. Just like chemical to digital, or analog copiers to digital copiers killed Kodak, analog cell phones to digital cell phones killed Motorolla, the transition of analog to digital scopes has significantly lowered the hurdle for a new comer to get into the scope business and upset the paradigm. The old players suddenly find out that 1) their low-end products cannot compete with the imports; and 2) they cannot keep up with the pace at which their digital competitors are updating their product lines. The next wave is going to be faced primarily by the new comers, however, as new display technology and data processing technology get more integrated and scopes will become more and more of two loosely integrated parts: data acquisition, and data processing / display. Guys like NI went down that path a couple decades ago but they are well positioned now for the next decades. |
| timb:
Ugh, a scope running LabVIEW. God help us all. I'm a big fan of Tek, they've been very generous as a sponsor to me. That said, I use an MSO2024B as my day to day scope, it works OK, but it's not something I would have paid money for, especially not the MSRP. (My Tek DMM and function gen are awesome though!) Hmmm, I wonder why the Danaher acquisition of Fluke and Keithly haven't affected them nearly as much? Sent from my Tablet |
| Howardlong:
--- Quote from: Wim_L on December 24, 2014, 03:36:38 pm --- --- Quote from: Ecklar on December 24, 2014, 12:11:36 am ---Some may say that the rise of the digital caused the demise but I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response. So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price? --- End quote --- Because that's not quite true... Digital scopes from that era weren't particularly nice to use, and that's putting it mildly. They didn't sample fast either, they didn't have long memory, they needed a lot of recovery time between triggers. Current entry-level digital scopes still have some of these advantages, or just poor quality. However, if you're prepared to spend the cost of, say, a 2467B on a recent DSO, you can get something that's almost as good at the things the 2467B was excellent at, and can also do a lot of things the 2467B couldn't do at all. --- End quote --- That's a pretty fair appraisal IMHO. As an example, given the choice between a 2467B and a basic ten year old TDS 2024B 2Gs/s 200MHz real time DSO I'd choose the TDS 2024B. Having single shot storage even with the crappy 2.5k memory that the TDS 2024B offers is probably the single most valuable feature, overriding the superior bandwidth capabilites of the 2467B. Having said that, the immediacy at which you can control an analogue scope through its plethora of knobs and switches makes them an absolute pleasure to use, in comparison to the modern DSO with many functions hidden away in a multitude of menus. |
| T3sl4co1l:
--- Quote from: LabSpokane on December 24, 2014, 04:34:43 pm ---It was notable that in the "Silicon Forest" of Portland and Vancouver during that era, virtually every other tech company was growing while Tek continued to shrink. Before Tek, Portland was basically a big logging/timber town with surrounding agriculture in the Willamette Valley and Vancouver was a shipyard. Tek changed everything there. It's sad to see them essentially gone. --- End quote --- It's funny because whenever I see one of their old scopes advertised as e.g. "portable, technician, maintenance, logging", I think... why would you need a scope with your chainsaw? ;D Tim |
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