LeCroy 9354AL replacement

[davorin]

Afternoon again (o;

I am considering getting rid of my beloved LeCroy 9354AL and replace it maybe with one of those:

- Lecroy LC534L
- Teledyne Waverunner LT 364
- Lecroy LC574AM

Or any other recommendation in this price class and having 4 channels @ 500MHz min.?


thanks in advance
davorin

[scopeman]

I would go with the LT series as it is LCD and a generation newer than the LC and is smaller and weighs probably a third of the LC.

Sam
LeCroy_Owners_Group on Yahoo! Groups moderator

[davorin]

Ah thanks ;-)

I assume the LT364 has the same LQ084VIDG21 LCD as the LT344 with 640x480 resolution?

Interestingly you mostly never see anything about LCD/VGA resolutions in the spec sheets of any instrument (o;

[nctnico]

An Agilent 54835/54845 perhaps?

[scopeman]

On the LCD I believe so. I replaced one in my LT584 1GHz scope sometime back. That might be another one to look at. The blue cabinet series are the WR2 and are newer and faster than the white cabinet WR1 LT series. That entire series of scopes was built by Iwatsu for LeCroy and are all excellent scopes. The WR1 and WR2 series are the closest ones to your 9300 series but cooler/faster/lighter and have more math. You really can't go wrong with any of these but none offer serial decoding. You could always use the scope in conjunction with a Saelae logic pod for that.

Also I would look at the Waveruner 6050 or 6100 or 6200. Especially if you can get one with all of the options turned on as it can do serial decode among other things.

Also have you looked at the Rigol 1054Z? You can get them very cheap now with all of the standard options turned on if you need serial decode and such. You and also hack them to 100MHz obviously not a LeCroy or the bandwidth of your venerable 9354AL but still quite useful.

If you are used to the math functions and the way the cursors and zoom works on your 9354 then the LeCroy WR1/WR2 models are your only option. The WR 6050/6100/6200 does have a big advantage of retaining the one knob per cursor and the dual knobs for horizontal and vertical expansion (a feature sadly lacking on the newer models (all for the lack of dirt cheap encoders and a few knobs, but don't get me started on that). The other thing that the 6050.etc. series has is individual vertical position knobs and also Windows (well to get the really advanced math they had to go to that to get the PC processing power, sadly). Note that I read somewhere where it may be possible to upgrade these to Win7 from XP but I do not know whether it is worth the effort. If you get one I would recommend that you get a copy of Acronis or Macrium Reflect or a similar image backup software and do an image backup of the whole drive (C and D). D contains the cal data. Also I would avoid updating the firmware as the newer one will break the scope. I can't at the moment remember the version (I took my personal scope into work to finish a project and have not brought it home yet). Anyway if you get one send me a PM and I will make a point to note the version for you.

One big advantage that the LT series has (like the 93XX) is that the boot quick, much quicker than Windoze.

Good luck and I hope you find the scope of your dreams!

Sam
W3OHM
Moderator of Yahoo! and Groups.io LeCroy groups

[TAMHAN]

One important warning on the LC, etc series though. The Autovoltage "sniffer" is disabled on most of the PSUs as per a service note.

When moving a scope from the 120VAC to ther 220VAC domain or the other way, you MUST open the PSU and check it before plugging in. I stupidly didnt, and still cant use my LC334 as I didnt get around to fixing its PSU...