I was kind of thinking of starting a new topic on basic test equipment that's relevant to 6502 hobbyists' work, but wasn't sure if it might dishearten those who are not in a situation to even afford the basics. I have other basic equipment besides what I mentioned above, and I can use the 6502 workbench computer (sometimes with peripheral breadboards) to substitute for a lot of other stuff like arbitrary waveform generators, digital scope (with four inputs and four traces a couple of weeks ago—see the pictures below, although I could have stood to at least double the sample rate for the sake of that one trace in particular), audio spectrum analyzer, programmable power supplies and loads with near-microsecond resolution, microcontroller programmer, etc., etc.. This stuff just keeps working for decades, although I've had to spray the contact cleaner into the pot.s and switches on some of the equipment. None of it is dependent on OSs or interfaces that are here today and gone tomorrow. When I worked in applications engineering at a VHF & UHF power transistor manufacturer in the mid-1980's, the lab had about $100,000 of equipment per engineer, back when $100,000 was more money than it is today. I made a couple of small pieces of test equipment for my amateur-radio hobby and calibrated it with the equipment at work. Since then I've worked at two tiny companies, being the only engineer in the company most of those years, companies with a shoestring budget, which is fine with me.
This breadboard was for multiplexing the four inputs to the workbench computer's single A/D converter: