4 ms·

I hate the TDS2024 (early-2000s digital scope) with a passion. The LCD is awful, the power supply breaks all the time, and the sample memory is laughable compar

by fsh 11mo ago

I hate the TDS2024 (early-2000s digital scope) with a passion. The LCD is awful, the power supply breaks all the time, and the sample memory is laughable compared to modern scopes, making it very difficult to use. Tektronix kept selling this thing (and similarly awful other ones) until not so long ago for an absurd price (~2000$). For some reason universities kept buying them instead of vastly superior ones from other companies. So now this piece of garbage is a absolutely everywhere.

inferiorhuman 11mo ago
I've been eyeing used bench multimeters recently and recently came across a discussion of Agilent vs Tektronix scopes. A comment on EEVBlog posits that the TDS still has value because the cost to upgrade to probes compatible with newer Tek scopes. I've no idea if that's even remotely true but it sounds plausible. Likewise if a military (especially the US) standardized on an older Tektronix scope that might be enough to keep production alive (much like the Boeing 767 or Fluke 77). A high retail price would suggest that Tektronix simply doesn't care about retail sales. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/buying-scope-agilent-or-tektronix/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/buying-scope-agilent...
- fsh 11mo ago
  It's easy to overlook the sample memory spec. These old Teks have decent bandwidth and 1 GS/s, but only a few thousand points of memory. This makes it impossible to zoom into a captured trace and leads to severe aliasing (trap for young players). In comparison, modern designs store millions to billions of points and can operate at high sample rates even on a slow timebase.
  - inferiorhuman 11mo ago
    It's not necessarily being overlooked, perhaps it's just overkill? Mend it Mark on youtube uses an ancient Tektronix scope for lots of things — and it's great for what he does. Of course sometimes the fancier scopes come out.

by fsh 11mo ago

inferiorhuman 11mo ago

I've been eyeing used bench multimeters recently and recently came across a discussion of Agilent vs Tektronix scopes. A comment on EEVBlog posits that the TDS still has value because the cost to upgrade to probes compatible with newer Tek scopes. I've no idea if that's even remotely true but it sounds plausible. Likewise if a military (especially the US) standardized on an older Tektronix scope that might be enough to keep production alive (much like the Boeing 767 or Fluke 77). A high retail price would suggest that Tektronix simply doesn't care about retail sales. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/buying-scope-agilent-or-tektronix/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/buying-scope-agilent...

fsh 11mo ago
It's easy to overlook the sample memory spec. These old Teks have decent bandwidth and 1 GS/s, but only a few thousand points of memory. This makes it impossible to zoom into a captured trace and leads to severe aliasing (trap for young players). In comparison, modern designs store millions to billions of points and can operate at high sample rates even on a slow timebase.
- inferiorhuman 11mo ago
  It's not necessarily being overlooked, perhaps it's just overkill? Mend it Mark on youtube uses an ancient Tektronix scope for lots of things — and it's great for what he does. Of course sometimes the fancier scopes come out.