In the market for a scope

[Toby Paddock]

One thing about modern scopes I find 
kind of sad is the short expected lifetime.
Something like an old TEK 465 was expected 
to be used for a long time. 

On the other hand TEK has already dropped support 
on the 2445 and I still think of them as "those new scopes". 
Maybe that's just my perspective. 
I'd like to have one myself. I like 'em.
(150MHz analog, 2 real channels, 2 trigger and limited range channels, 
cursors, Z-axis input, chan 2 10mV/div OUT)

I tried out a TEK TDS 3032 with the "digital phosphor" and it did seem 
to do a pretty good job of simulating variable persistence. 
And it did work in x-y mode. They call it "triggered x-y", I don't know 
what that means. It did have some blank spots in the waveform 
when doing x-y at LFO type frequencies. A minor complaint I 
have is that the persistence fades smoothly from the fresh 
waveform trace. On an analog scope the fresh waveform 
is brighter than the persisting stuff and then fades from there.
Man, that's a bad description. 
Where I work these are becoming the standard bench scope. Pretty cool.

I would only get a digital scope if I already had something 
analog to use as a sanity check when the going gets weird.

Way out of my personal budget anyway, 
so it's easy to be critical. 

 - -- -  Toby "I wouldn't trust a digital scope any farther 
than I could comfortably spit a rat" Paddock