Looking for an Oscilloscope 1

[Noway2]

Hi All,

As part of the new board project I am working on, I am trying to modernize the tools that I have available to me. One of the items that I am looking for is a new or used oscilloscope with a higher bandwidth than what I presently have.

I am looking for a digital storage scope with at least a 500MHz bandwidth (i.e. at least 1 Gig sample rate). It will also be necessary to select a probe termination of 50 Ohms and to be able adjust the probe attenuation factor to something other than 1x and 10x. The 300Mhz LeCroy that I presently have is capable of these features. The reason for this is so that one can use a resistive probe with 50 Ohm cable to better observe the signal edges than is possible with a capacitive probe.

Does anybody have a suggestion for a scope and know of reputable places to obtain used equipment?

 

[Skogsgurra]

I bought a LeCroy WaveSurfer 424 recently. It has everything you need, except BW. But there is the 454, which goes up to 500 MHz.

I have used it on the bench and in paper mills and steel works. I can recommend it. It is based on a Windows XP machine and has all the documemtation tools you can want. The screen capture works very well. It even changes colors so you don't emty the toner cassettes when printing.

It has powerful triggering with a lot of options. Combinatorial also. And it does a lot of math. On one waveform or two. FFT with four different windows. And enhanced resolution (11 bits effective).

Touch screen and three USB ports as well as internet connection. Love it!

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[Noway2]

I found one of those listed on Ebay. It does look like a wonderfull scope ! The price tag of $19,000 was a little bit too high though. There was a 500 Mhz 4 channel Lecroy listed for a staring bid of $2500. I think that the buy now price of $4000 indicates that they are a reseller and would probably find a way to avoid taking prices around the starting bid. I brought it to the attention of my boss, though, and he seemed to think that the $2500 price tag was about right so this helps me to narrow the search some.

 

[Skogsgurra]

I think you have a much better price than I got. Bought it from the local reseller and paid close to 9000 USD. But I got probes, the math package and a worthless carrying bag. Make sure you get the math pack if you need that functionality.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[Noway2]

Thank you, I appreciate your suggestion. I hadn't considered a math package.

Now that I think about it, the math package may be helpfull. Since I am designing a new microcontroller board with longish address and data bus lines I would like to get a scope that will have a chance at seeing the high frequency content of the busses due to the edge rates. A math package with an FFT may be helpfull in determing aproximately where the knee frequency / fall off point is for the energy content of the pulses.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Absolutely! And in many other situations as well.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org