[sdiy] 5Mhz scope enough for SDIY?

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net> wrote:
>
>On 29 Aug 2007, at 16:18, Samppa Tolvanen wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I could buy Telequipment D61a cheaply (and it's local pick-up), but I
>> was wondering if it has enough bandwidth for SDIY work - ie. would I
>> be able to catch spurious OPAMP oscillations messing things up ect.
>
>I'd probably not bother, unless it's a give-away price. 5MHz is ok  
>for audio (and I used a similar scope for years when I built a lot of  
>guitar effects boxes) but synth work often seems to require poking  
>about in higher frequency signals too, especially if you're trying to  
>repair something commercial.

Also, there can be bits and pieces like MIDI controllers or hardware sequencers that
are digital.  Just a simple PAiA MIDI-CV has a system clock of 12 MHz.  I bought a
20 MHz Oscope a few years back and since I've branched out into FPGA synth work, it
has been a good thing though it is just barely capable of what I need.  Most of the
time, I'm looking at the audio output of the DAC, but I've had to look at other,
faster signals occasionally.  My suggestion would be that if you have the money, get
a bit more oscope (at least in terms of bandwidth) than you will need.  But as has
already been pointed out, 5 MHz is nothing to sneeze at and it's WAY better than no
oscope at all.  Heck, my Eico 460 (that's 460 KHz) was better than no oscope...

-- ScottG

-------------------------------------------------------------

-- Scott Gravenhorst
-- GateMan I - Xilinx Spartan-3E Based MIDI Synthesizer
-- PolyDaWG/8 - 8 voice FPGA polyphonic synthesizer
-- FatMan: home1.gte.net/res0658s/fatman/
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-- When the going gets tough, the tough use the command line.