<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">I recall a roommate would occasionally pull an oscilloscope out of the trash, or maybe an unlocked office, an bring it home and ask me to do “the thing”: Wire the left and right signals from the stereo into X and Y. <div>Space out.<br><br><div dir="ltr">Benjamin Tremblay</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Oct 10, 2020, at 5:44 PM, Roman Sowa <modular@go2.pl> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p>David, I wasn't refering to your scope. Agree old scopes are cool
(or not, they are really hot energy eaters). I'd love to have a
bunch of them, but only to look at them and maybe show some
unimportant waveforms so they look nice. Unfortunately I don't
have so much space for storage. And USB scope is not my thing, I
haven't used it in years.</p>
<p>Roman<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">W dniu 2020-10-10 o 22:47, David G
Dixon pisze:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:DC0D3561ADD547A6AE6F992C30087E0B@david78c70950b">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.23562">
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="934364420-10102020"><font size="2" face="Arial" color="#0000ff">Roman, you're probably
right about digital vs analog scopes, but the old
Tektronix scope is cool, and it was free.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="934364420-10102020"></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="934364420-10102020"><font size="2" face="Arial" color="#0000ff">I also have a
Picoscope, which is a little USB probe that plugs into a
computer and runs off of software. That is also very
useful, as it has spectrum analysis -- I use it when
calibrating sines to minimize THD, and also when calibrating
multipliers to minimize carrier bleed. That was also free
-- Danjel van Tijn gave it to me as a birthday present many
moons ago.</font></span></div>
<br>
<div dir="ltr" class="OutlookMessageHeader" lang="en-us" align="left">
<hr tabindex="-1">
<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><b>From:</b> Synth-diy
[<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:synth-diy-bounces@synth-diy.org">mailto:synth-diy-bounces@synth-diy.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Roman
Sowa<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, October 09, 2020 11:23 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:synth-diy@synth-diy.org">synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [sdiy] Starting Point?<br>
</font><br>
</div>
<span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffecb3; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE:
12px"><span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffecb3; COLOR: #000000;
FONT-SIZE: 12px"><span style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px;
LINE-HEIGHT: 1.6; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffecb3; FONT-STYLE:
normal; PADDING-LEFT: 3px; PADDING-RIGHT: 3px; COLOR:
#000000; FONT-SIZE: 12px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; PADDING-TOP:
3px">[<strong>CAUTION:</strong> Non-UBC Email]</span></span></span>
<p>Totally agree.</p>
<p>What may not seem so obvious, there's a catch - when you can
afford all the fancy tools you dream of, then suddenly your
creativity drops down the floor. With crappy tools you have to
be more creative and think, imagine, explore, experiment. For
example soldering - you have to learn how to solder anyhow, and
cheap soldering iron is not forgiving, so it will force you to
think what you're doing and be totally aware of what to do in
certain situations. I have bought my first temperature
controlled station about 20 years after I started soldering.
Only because of that I could appreciate it. In case you wonder,
yest it's possible to succesfully solder SMD with transformer
soldering gun.<br>
</p>
<p>The scope is essential, I think even more than multimeter, but
today you can buy small toy scopes for below $100. And frankly
they are better than big 50kg scopes I had in school. I have
quite a few of those toy scopes, this is my small addiction, so
if you want to ask about specific model, I probably have that.
Don't buy "best scope you can afford", or "scope planned for the
future". Those times are over. Now there's new scope coming
every year, cheaper and better than others. After 2-3 years
you'll know what to look for, and it will be more GAS hitting
than real measurement needs. <br>
</p>
<p>It is very unpopular point of view here, but I think modern
digital scopes are much better that vintage analog Tek.<br>
</p>
<p>Roman<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">W dniu 2020-10-10 o 01:49, Peter
Pearson pisze:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:CA+qbVc-t_fBQG-Mi_-qs8Rzcdci_1VXBT_8XoAw3PTp9+twxUQ@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">While I agree that spending $1k will definitely
get you set up, we aren't all so lucky. Especially when we're
spending money made mowing lawns or working minimum wage as a
youngster. What I meant was that a quality iron will really
make the biggest improvement. That plus an "it works fine"
multimeter and a working 20MHz oscilloscope used is almost all
you need (less parts but that's subjective) to do some
damage. Take the price point down from $1k to something more
like $200-$300 or less and that's attainable for a lot of
people.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Something like this:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicV3Z6XLFA" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicV3Z6XLFA</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>BUY USED!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You can work up to a $10k oscilloscope or whatever once
you <u>need</u> one.</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 7:36
PM Benjamin Tremblay via Synth-diy <<a href="mailto:synth-diy@synth-diy.org" moz-do-not-send="true">synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid;
MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">I learned this stuff as a kid through
trial, error, burned fingers, and Radio Shack. I never had
more than ten or so dollars on hand, so no voltmeter, no
breadboard, no spools of wire. I remember building the basic
556 “Atari punk console” circuit and just thinking it made
horrible noises nobody would ever want to hear.<br>
After building light-controlled oscillators for a year, I
started checking out books at Colorado State University. The
ancient books were the best: Musique Concrète and this book
written in Spanish from the 1940s showing how a film loop
generating optical pulses going into a modulator circuit
could be what we call a drum machine. My mother told me
about the Telharmonium in Worcester MA she read about in
Yankee Magazine. I built a Theremin using an oscillator and
an AM radio, and realized it would be easier to master the
violin than to get a melody out of a Theremin. Then I found
the 1970s books from UCLA on what we now call West Coast
Synthesis. When I got to the log tables in the middle of the
book I knew I couldn’t follow it; if music was math, music
was not for me. <br>
It took a couple of years of futility to realize I had to
try again.<br>
Paia was so inspirational, yet at the same time I felt the
kits were full of design compromises that left me in the
dark about best practices. (I remember testing the Gnome
after my brother put it together and we both thought it was
broken; but it was just the T filter doing its crappy T
filter thing.)<br>
Then I was gifted a broken Paia Proteus when I was a junior
in high school. Fixing that beautiful machine gave me a new
appreciation for Paia.<br>
<br>
Paia turned me onto Don Lancaster and Craig Anderton (as
editor of Electronic Musician). <br>
After I got my hands on the books by Bryce Ward and Barry
Klein, I really wanted to do this stuff, but I had no way to
earn a living, and neither the math nor the music.<br>
<br>
How long does one have to live before you just start doing
what you love? <br>
<br>
Benjamin Tremblay<br>
<br>
> On Oct 9, 2020, at 6:53 PM, Benjamin Tremblay via
Synth-diy <<a href="mailto:Synth-diy@synth-diy.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
> <br>
> <br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Synth-diy mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Synth-diy@synth-diy.org" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a><br>
<a href="http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
Synth-diy mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Synth-diy@synth-diy.org" moz-do-not-send="true">Synth-diy@synth-diy.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy" moz-do-not-send="true">http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>Synth-diy mailing list</span><br><span>Synth-diy@synth-diy.org</span><br><span>http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy</span><br></div></blockquote></div></body></html>