how to troubleshoot? Not all of us have trustfunds!

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Scott Gravenhorst <music.maker at gte.net>
Subject: Re: how to troubleshoot?  Not all of us have trustfunds!
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 06:10:53

> I have to agree with Harry.  And after all, everything we do
> has some cost of some sort.  In DIY electronics, it's some
> cash spent for decent tools.  And as Harry points out, most of
> them are one time costs.  At least things like oscopes last
> a long time.  They are invaluable IMHO.  Nobody ever said
> working with electronics is "free" or even "cheap".  There
> just is no guarantee of that.  It's an illusion created by
> the fact that some chips are $0.15.  But then some are $20 or
> $50.  You won't regret buying an Oscope.

There's much power in them scopes! Seriously!

Having a scope on my bench certainly helped to boost my knowledge in
electronics. I started off with an old tube scope which I got. Then,
at one school I where at, they had two Tek 547 scopes with the
4-channel module in them, me and my friend bougth them for 200 SEK
each. These where tube scopes speced to 50 MHz but capable of
more. Also, they where pretty well kept, much better than what old
Philips scopes show up as. These good old 547s have features that
many digital scopes could just dream of... double time-base, trace
separation, trigg-offset etc. If you find one which is not too
seriously beaten up, GET IT. They are loads of fun, if you only can
host it size-wise and can stand the sound of the fan.

Bandwidth is good to have, 20 MHz is sufficient for most work in
audio, but then I have an effect box here which had my 50 MHz scope
beg for mercy. My new scope can handle that on any channel...

Channels... what can I say, you just can't get enought. My current
scope has 7 of them... and I've had use of a scope with 16 of them (I
ate them all up on my first serious use of it). You usually only need
2 for most analog/audio stuff thought, but occasionally you really
want more. Having only one can be a hairpulling experience at times,
since once you used 2 or more, you've get into habbit of comparing
waveforms. If you do that cleverly, you can handle situations where
you really just wanted to trow in a few more channels. My tips is, of
you have no scope, you have no scope... if your resources are limited,
a single channel scope is better than nothing, but if possible, strive
towards 2 channels. If you bump into more channels - hey, catch it! ;)

Either way, scopes are powerfull tools, they visualize complex
processes in time.

Cheers,
Magnus