Hi John,

"John Ferrell" wrote in message
...
I have turned away from PC based test equipment because my PC changes
every few years and my applications become "Legacy Applications" that
either die or require an expensive upgrade.

I agree, although I'd say this is less of a problem these days than, say, a
decade back... if you go with a USB interface there's a good chance the driver
will work over the course of a couple major Windows OSes (e.g., Windows XP is
largely backwards compatible with drivers back to NT); if test equipment
manufacturers started using Ethernet more often, it'd make the equipment more
or less usable over more than a decade of OSes.

The other nice thing in recent years is that laptops are now cheap enough
(~$500 new) that you can often afford to, e.g., dedicate one to some
specialized piece of test equpiment you have indefinitely. Desktops are
ridiculously cheap -- ~$250 new in many cases --, but of course bulkier (and
no integrated LCD).

Chances are that a Tektronix 453 with a bright screen will do
everything you want for less than $100 including shipping.
It just gets better from there.

Any analog scope has rather limited utility for debugging digital logic. It
can certainly be done, but I'd defy you to try to debug, e.g., an I2C or
RS-232 exchange that hangs with one.

Pick one, buy it, learn it. If it does not meet your expectations you
can usually get something out of it on Ebay & buy another.

This is good advice... those old scopes have pretty much depreciated as much
as they're going to, so learning on one is relatively cheap.

---Joel