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>an oscilloscope that costs 3x the value of your car on a trade show floor Typical high end microwave measurement system cost as much as a Ferrari car. Good c

>an oscilloscope that costs 3x the value of your car on a trade show floor Typical high end microwave measurement system cost as much as a Ferrari car. Good cable and connectors can set you back by several thousand dollars. It's a very good business space prime for disruption (hint SDR - or software-defined radio). Fun facts, the grand daddy of Silicon Valley start-up is HP (then Agilent, and now Keysight) selling function signal generator.

concrete_head 2y ago
Interesting. Though he didn't say what kind of car he drives, it could be a real shitter
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  2007 Toyota Camry. I looked it up, it's actually worth even less than I thought it was haha.
mindcrime 2y ago
Good cable and connectors can set you back by several thousand dollars. Another domain where that is true involves logic analyzers. A few years ago, on a bit of a lark, I bought a (used) fairly high-end Keysight logic analyzer. The kind of thing that cost like $20,000 or more when it was brand new. But I got a sweet deal on it, so I bought it. Only... it came with no test leads. And then I started shopping for the leads. Yikes. I forget the exact numbers now, but as best as I can recall, the leads came in 64pin sets, where the device supported up to 4 test lead sets, for 256 total channels. And just one of the 64pin test lead sets cost something like $1500. So a full set would cost another $6000 on top of the device itself. I think that was about what I paid for the analyzer itself in the first place! Now I don't regret buying it and in truth I never needed to use 256 channels anyway, so I only bought 1 of the test lead sets so far. But yeah... test leads / cables /etc. for high bandwidth / low latency / high frequency applications get pretty damn expensive.
wildzzz 2y ago
I've got a rack of equipment that sometimes requires a special calibration where I need to lug over a signal generator. Of course the only ones we have available that go to the necessary frequency weigh like 50lbs. I've recently been eyeing a little gadget that costs about 1/10 or 1/20 the cost of the Keysight units, interfaces using USB oe Ethernet, and is about the size of a deck of cards. The accuracy isn't perfect on its own but that's what a 10MHz ref clock is for. It's amazing how far tech has come and it's amazing how much we are still paying for these dinosaur pieces of test equipment.

concrete_head 2y ago

Interesting. Though he didn't say what kind of car he drives, it could be a real shitter

geerlingguy 2y ago
2007 Toyota Camry. I looked it up, it's actually worth even less than I thought it was haha.

mindcrime 2y ago

Good cable and connectors can set you back by several thousand dollars. Another domain where that is true involves logic analyzers. A few years ago, on a bit of a lark, I bought a (used) fairly high-end Keysight logic analyzer. The kind of thing that cost like $20,000 or more when it was brand new. But I got a sweet deal on it, so I bought it. Only... it came with no test leads. And then I started shopping for the leads. Yikes. I forget the exact numbers now, but as best as I can recall, the leads came in 64pin sets, where the device supported up to 4 test lead sets, for 256 total channels. And just one of the 64pin test lead sets cost something like $1500. So a full set would cost another $6000 on top of the device itself. I think that was about what I paid for the analyzer itself in the first place! Now I don't regret buying it and in truth I never needed to use 256 channels anyway, so I only bought 1 of the test lead sets so far. But yeah... test leads / cables /etc. for high bandwidth / low latency / high frequency applications get pretty damn expensive.

wildzzz 2y ago

I've got a rack of equipment that sometimes requires a special calibration where I need to lug over a signal generator. Of course the only ones we have available that go to the necessary frequency weigh like 50lbs. I've recently been eyeing a little gadget that costs about 1/10 or 1/20 the cost of the Keysight units, interfaces using USB oe Ethernet, and is about the size of a deck of cards. The accuracy isn't perfect on its own but that's what a 10MHz ref clock is for. It's amazing how far tech has come and it's amazing how much we are still paying for these dinosaur pieces of test equipment.