[BC] Portable scopes

[John Lyles]

Dave
At work and at home, I use TDS3000B series O'scopes. We call them "the plastic" scopes at work. We have dozens of them now rack mounted also in our RF plant. I bought my own TDS3032B on Epay for a decent price. The B series uses 3.5 inch floppies for storage and for updates to firmware. The newer C series use USB port. Both have built in ethernet so you can use a laptop to operate them remotely, very slowly though. I even had one running inside a floating modulator deck sitting at 20 kV, and changed the scales and timebase and recorded waveforms using fiber optic ethernet transceiver. These scopes have an extra bit of vertical resolution over the 1000 and 2000 series, and it really makes a difference in the waveform fidelity. They don't exhibit the steps seen in waveforms on the cheaper brethren from Tek. 

If you are just interested in "is it there, or not" as you spake, then just about any cheaper LCD scope might suffice. But if you are looking for a replacement to old analog CRT scopes that have digital storage, the TDS 3000 can't be beat by any competitors, from what I have seen. 

John Lyles

> From: "Dave Dunsmoor" <mrfixit at min.midco.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
>     I'm looking at buying a small handheld, or perhaps even small "benchtop"
> type LCD 'scope. Primarily to be used in "is it there, or isn't it" type
> troubleshooting, something easily transported.
> 
>     What do you use, what do you like/dislike?
> 
> Dave Dunsmoor