Digital/Analog Scopes (was: how to troubleshoot?)

[Michael Buchstaller]

>> I'd go with a (gasp) good digital scope, and keep an old analog in reserve
>> for the times when the digital LIES to you... and you need a sanity check.

I have noticed that ditital scopes are nice, but sometimes they play tricks on
you. (like waveform aliasing...)
Licuily, i work with an spprox. 15 years old scope from the former "BBC Metrawatt",
this has only a bandwith of 10 MHz but is good enough for me. The cool thing here
is that it is an analog scope which has digital trace memories and it´s operation
can instantly be changed with a switch - so comparison is easy and i do not even
habe to change the probe cord to my old Tek564. (BTW: analog storage scopes
rock !)

>> Digital is great for frequency, pulse width, lfo, envelopes... etc.  Roll mode
>> will let
>> you see your .001Hz triangle. NO analog will do that.

This is not true. Sure, you have no roll mode on analog scopes. but you could also
enable the storage and set it to erase the screen after each sweep; that does work
very well.

>Right. Digital scopes is a mixed blessing. They can do stuff which
>analog jobs just can't do.

True. Looking at MIDI or other serial data is a lot easier in the digital domain.


-Michael Buchstaller