Scope Choice for Vintage Computer Troubleshooting

From: Bob Shannon <bshannon_at_tiac.net>
Date: Mon Oct 7 12:20:00 2002

Works just fine, for what measurments?

Analog scopes have clear advantages in some cases, digital scopes in others.
LCD scopes are always digital scopes, and so they have some of the issues
common to CRT based digital scopes.

In most cases, a good quality digital scope (I use a Tek 2430A) can be
pushed
to do what comes easily to a much lower quality analog scope, but it
takes much
more work to get the scope setup just right.

Manufactuers still make analog scopes for this very reason, which type works
best depends on the types of signals, and the types of measurments being
made.

For people just learning to use an oscilloscope, I generally reccomend
you start
with an analog scope, as they are much less likely to 'lie' to you when
you don't have
the scope triggered correctly than a digital scope.

This should not become an argument over which type of scope is 'better'
than the
other. Each type excells at some things, and not others.

But which type of scope should be used for Vintage Compters is easy.

A vintage scope of the correct era for the machine when it was
manufactured, of course!

steve wrote:

>--- "J.C. Wren" <jcwren_at_jcwren.com> wrote:
>
>> All LCD scopes are junk compared to a good tube
>>scope. > LCDs scopes are a compromise. The
>>
>bandwidth is
>
>>poor (though adequate for
>>most 4Mhz systems), and do very poorly on dynamic
>>signals. They're OK to
>>capture a single image, but if you want to watch for
>>jitter in a clock and
>>such, they're useless.
>>
>
>Huh? What? My 200Mhz, 2Gs/sec Tek TDS LCD scope works
>just fine thank you...
>
>steve
>
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