[Test-Equipment] Oscilloscopes

[J. Forster]

I assume you 7854 not 8754. That's what I use. Seems to me the choices are
7704A, 7834, 7854, 7904. This is based on my love for 7000 series scopes. I
don't much like the 51xx and 54xx. Less BW, fewer plug-ins, far fewer made.

IMO, the 7104 is an orphan, so that's easy to eliminate.

The 7704A and 7904 are pretty much a wash, IMO. I have a number of the 7704As
and I went with them because they were cheaper and easier to fix because they
did not push the technology as much, especially when fairly new.

I've since gotten a couple of 7854s and a 7834

The 7834 is nice if you need a fast storage scope. They are very nice, unless
you have CRT problems. Getting another may be really hard. Not a common scope,
BTW. It will do one-shot stuff the 7854 and 7633 will not. It's a true two beam
scope with analog storage.

That leaves the 7854. It has enough BW for almost all applications and the
digital functions are nice. If you get one, get the keyboard. The programming is
a bit funky. I've not used the GPIB interface, although it's pretty similar to a
7D20. As I remember the 7D20 is supported by LabView, which is handy.

The digital functions are useful. Here are a couple of my applications:

Time sync with WWV.. I used the 7854 to average the pulses from a receiver
output from WWV, using a 1 pps trigger from my local (LORAN locked) crystal
oscillator. You can evaluate the dynamics of propagation using this trick.

When designing an inverter, I put transistor collector voltage on one trace,
current on another and computed point-by-point power dissipation to aid in
tweaking the switching circuit. Very useful.

All that said, the best choice for you may or may not be one of the above. It
depends on your specific applications.

Good luck,
-John



Edward J White wrote:

> Hi John:
> What would you recommend for a analog high freq 400 MHz + bench not portable
> scope? 8754?
> Ed
> WA3BZT