AVR-Chat

I wouldn't be as nervous as Dave, Larry, many of us are small shops and 
we need to support one another as much as possible as long as we can 
provide support for what we make.  But as he wrote...$4K will get you an 
awful lot of scope these days, especially on the used market.

Test equipment is our business and many of our customers have tried to 
go the "PC Scope" route over the years.  They're okay for someone 
working at their desk rather in the lab where they can spread out.  
However, when there's a need to do real work and take real measurements 
there's nothing like having a real scope with its own display and knobs 
to fiddle with...be it analog or digital.  The digital scopes these days 
aren't much bigger than a notebook computer, too, so they're not that 
big a deal to pack around in the field.  There are also a lot of them 
available on the used market.  There should also be a rather good supply 
of them up in your area.

No matter what you do, I would go with at least a 100MHz model.  
Remember that your pulse edges cause your equivalent bandwidth needs to 
increase significantly.


REB


Larry Barello wrote:

>Anyone on the list own a PC scope, in particular the Cleverscope?  I am
>willing to spend $4k usd on a used HP MSO, but if I can get essentially the
>same for $1k I am tempted to take the risk.  I need this tool for protocol &
>logic debugging on my AVR boards.
>
>My concerns:
>1. The analog performance isn't really what is specified.  I have compared
>cheap with quality for "equivalent" hardware in other test equipment and in
>general one gets what one pays for.
>2. It is a one man shop so promised software enhancements might be slow to
>come or fail to arrive altogether.
>3. It is kind of nice having a separate screen for signal display and actual
>knobs to spin.  I am afraid I'll eventually have yet another PC & Display on
>my bench which in the end is larger than the dedicated MSO...
>
>On the plus side, the Cleverscope is FPGA based and new features (like
>protocol triggers) are simply a matter of control software updates.  It is
>small so I could pack it in with the laptop on field trips, etc.
>
>
>-----------
>Larry Barello
>www.barello.net
>  
>