From a discord I’m on for RMC (Retro Man Cave) on youtube:
[2:00 PM] exojelly: Just get a cheap “real” scope.
[2:00 PM] exojelly: You can get a Rigol or a Siglent one for next to no money nowadays. Doesn’t have to be the most recent one. Get it used.
[2:00 PM] exojelly: They are so small and light, they’re easily stowed away in the closet if you don’t use them. They are not the heavy behemoths they used to be.
[2:01 PM] exojelly: They are also supershallow nowadays.
[2:03 PM] exojelly: Handheld or, worse, USB with UI on the PC is always some kind of weird annoying tradeoff. With handheld, you tend to pay in price and inconvenience for what’s essentially a “field instrument”, meant for service technicians carrying it around for special purposes to a site.
[2:09 PM] exojelly: It’s really, really hard to argue against the traditional knobs interface for vertical, horizontal and cursor/parameters. My scope has a touch screen and full remote control via web, and it’s absolutely great, but it also has the traditional knobs and buttons.
[2:10 PM] exojelly: The handhelds I’ve seen tend to adapt the UI concept to circumstances that are most likely not applying to you, if you’re repairing stuff at your desk.
I’ve yet to see any cheap enough Oscilloscopes, even older 20mhz ones often go for 60GBP with 100mhz ones going for much higher prices and I am not even sure if 20mhz bandwidth is enough for what I would like to test with one.
I am only just getting used to using my CMOS/TTL logic probe to help figure things out but that will never allow me use test points along with pot adjustments to adjust wave forms as per service manual recommendations.
Think I have a bit more learning to do before finally caving in and buying one would be suitable for me. That said I believe I need a good ESR meter and perhaps a bench power supply before I even consider an oscilloscope.
