6502.org

I have an oscilloscope of some kind at home. I scavenged it from the office when they were clearing out a storage unit. It's just the scope as far as I recall, no leads. I assume it's reasonable quality. I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It's languishing in the garage at the moment.

I also have a nice (well it seemed nice when I bought it at the hardware store) DMM, it just happens to be dead for some reason. Even after replacing the batteries. Not sure what that's about either.

I got a nice scope from EBAY awhile ago. It's a Tektronix 2440, but it came with crappy probes, not even Tek probes. It's worth the money to buy good probes too, that at least match the frequency of the scope. Anything I measure above 40MHz looks like a sinewave, but it still helps me out when I'm really stuck. Although, I know for my present work I'm missing seeing all the high frequency noise @~100MHz... I've still yet to upgrade because the probes are so expensive, but they're on my list of things to purchase very soon.

I have one of those cheap little DSO NANO scopes. For what I use it for, none of my other scopes are of practical use while it fits the bill just perfectly. I got it mainly to work with my son's off-road racing motorcycles in the field. It's just not practical to bring my big Tektronics or even my Unit-T DSO out into the woods. The capabilities of the little NANO scope are plenty for working with the frequencies found in the ignition and lighting systems in his bikes and it reproduces the waveforms with sufficient fidelity to make it far more than worthless.

Is it a replacement for the good bench scope. No way, but it's not useless.

It samples at 1GS/sec, so it's pretty good to close to 100mHz. I am really pleased with this scope for the price. It has performed beyond my expectations and you can't ask for more than that, from a personal perspective at least.

Actually, there is a little story behind this scope. That quirky behavior I mentioned before turned out to be a bad scope. I thought, since I bought it from a Chinese vendor off of eBay, I would be out of luck. I contacted the vendor anyway and they got the manufacturer involved. Between them and I, we determined the scope to be bricked. The vendor shipped me a new one without delay and paid for me to send the bad one back. You can bet I am absolutely delighted with that kind of customer service. The new scope, as I said, has turned out to be better than I originally expected. All in all, a great experience and a great deal for the money. The eBay vendor was infinitystore0001. You can trust them.

To be fair, the review wasn't about the DSO Nano, it was another model (looks very different). The Nano doesn't claim to go above 1MHz, unlike that other scope. From what I can tell from the specs the Nano also has very different hardware inside.

But yes, I would take a good old 20MHz dual channel Tektronix before any of those, unless I for some reason really needed something that can be carried in a pocket.

-Tor

How much accuracy and precision do you need?

Those cheap little component testers like the GM328A seem to be within the tolerance of most affordable capacitors.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004553677792.html

Might hold you over till things get better.

I have some similar for many years and it did not break yet (well, some character display wrong, i think it is Ohm, as block of random points, but it does not matter).

For some fast measurments it is good, even if I am not sure, how precise it is, it is consistent and with mainly digital circuits I do not care, if it is of by 0.2%, 1% or 5%.

(Well, "fast" - my take like second or two for each measurment, but I rarely measure more like 5 items at time - maybe "handy" will be better wording?)

They are. I actually have 3 of them. A T7, a T4 (which were free to me) and the afore mentioned GM328A. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg but they all work. The T4 is simplest and cheapest, the T7 is in a nice little case with a Lithium battery and charge port which makes it most convenient. However, I feel the GM328A is the best of them.

I modified my T7 to put a much bigger battery in it and banana sockets to use standard cables/probes with it.

They work and do a fair job of giving you a centerfield measurement.

Strange, I have had 3 notifications today about replies to this thread yet no replies have been made. Has the forum lost it's mind? Or is it me?

Possibly some spam got posted and then Garth removed it.

But it could at the same time also be true that you've lost your mind, Bill!

-- Jeff

I didn't this time, but I wonder if you'll get a notice if someone edits their older post.  I edit my old posts quite often, to fix links that went dead, clarify something, etc..