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Oscilloscope advice

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First post, by Nexxen

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I'd like to have an input on what to buy.
Main use would be to repair mobos, gfx and such. Not cutting edge but retro stuff.

I'm going for around 100€ but offer is too wild to understand what I need, as I am a beginner in the field. 😀
I've seen a multimeter/osc. combo, if that is a good idea.

Thanks a lot for your help!!

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Reply 1 of 7, by CharlieFoxtrot

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For that kind of work you won't need more than two channels, I can almost bet on that. At least I haven't needed and 90% of the time I use just one. There are cases in troubleshooting when it is beneficial to probe more than one point at the same time, so there is that. But two has been totally sufficient so far.

I can't say what you can get for 100€ as new, but I have some basic Owon scope and it is great for the price. If I remember correctly, I got it from some Amazon Prime Day deal for around 150€ couple of years ago. I think regularly they are a bit over 200€. It is very basic scope, so that 100€ sounds a bit tight to me.

You should also consider if you need scope at all. Have you used logic probe and found out that it isn't enough for your needs? To me it sounds that if you don't know what kind of equipment you actually need, you don't actually know whether you need one. Don't shell money on a scope unnecessarily, because it is pretty much the last tool you'll need. For example, I would first invest to better soldering/desoldering equipment and multimeter, because they are much more critical for successful repairs. Most of the repairs I do don't even benefit from oscilloscope. In fact, most of my oscilloscope use cases are with black screening 8-bit micros where I suspect multiple failed chips: they can be annoying to troubleshoot without scope, but the architecture is simple enough, that you can quite easily probe clock, reset, data and address lines and memory refresh signals and quickly resolve what may have failed and you don't need to go blindly changing chips.

Oscilloscopes also have a learning curve, and that isn't a shallow one. Not so much how to use the scope itself, it isn't much more complicated than multimeter, but you need to understand what you need to probe and how to interpret the readings. It is not a magic wand for troubleshooting and I consider myself pretty bad with it, although I've had it for quite some time now.

Reply 2 of 7, by Jo22

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To me, it's really hard to make an recommendation here.

There are classic oscillographs with a CRT (100% analogue),
early storage oscilloscopes (able to keep the drawed images on their CRT),
analogue/digital hybrids (real CRT), entirely digital scopes etc etc ..

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Reply 3 of 7, by vstrakh

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Cheap stuff like Fnirsi 1C15 or ADS1014 (YEAPOOK clone?) has no hardware fifo, and their sampling rate is not the real rate. They sample periodic signal at much lower frequency but with phase shifting between periods, it's called "non-realtime interleaved sampling". The waveform is wobbly because of interleaved sampling, the triggering is very primitive because it's done in software, overall absolutely inappropriate for analysis of fast events like glitching signals.
Not sure about cheap Owons, but I'd first look for teardown videos. If the scope has no FPGA or CPLD+SRAM (a cheap way to implement real declared giga/mega-samples per second ), then I'd stay away from such "scope".

Reply 4 of 7, by CharlieFoxtrot

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vstrakh wrote on 2023-03-17, 19:02:

Cheap stuff like Fnirsi 1C15 or ADS1014 (YEAPOOK clone?) has no hardware fifo, and their sampling rate is not the real rate. They sample periodic signal at much lower frequency but with phase shifting between periods, it's called "non-realtime interleaved sampling". The waveform is wobbly because of interleaved sampling, the triggering is very primitive because it's done in software, overall absolutely inappropriate for analysis of fast events like glitching signals.
Not sure about cheap Owons, but I'd first look for teardown videos. If the scope has no FPGA or CPLD+SRAM (a cheap way to implement real declared giga/mega-samples per second ), then I'd stay away from such "scope".

Agree, realtime sampling is a must. And yeah, at least my scope has real time sampling. Actually, my Owon is Hanmatek distributed, but they are same stuff afaik, Hanmatek model is DOS1102:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Oscilloscope-2-Cha … ial%2C97&sr=1-7

You can easily find reviews and forum discussions on EEVBlog etc. of these. They are low end, but not trash and capable enough for my needs. I didn't see any reason to shell more money on a scope and these ticked my boxes.

Reply 5 of 7, by BitWrangler

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ADB with an Owon review, using it on C64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ec1n9ScGTw

I'd definitely go with a USB scope btw on limited funds, all the money is in the critical parts rather than cheapass LCDs and SOCs

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Reply 6 of 7, by Jo22

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BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-17, 19:51:

ADB with an Owon review, using it on C64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ec1n9ScGTw

I'd definitely go with a USB scope btw on limited funds, all the money is in the critical parts rather than cheapass LCDs and SOCs

My heart! 😲 For a moment I thought you meant you used a C64 based scope!

https://www.forum64.de/index.php?thread/95033 … 374#post1448374

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Reply 7 of 7, by shevalier

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Nexxen wrote on 2023-03-17, 17:06:

I've seen a multimeter/osc. combo, if that is a good idea.

Drop by Dave, oscilloscopes are picking up there

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https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/

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