Need pointers on Oscilloscopes

[Julian Wolfe]

Yeah, I'd rather not have a PDP11 sized scope, but thanks for the
suggestion, I'm sure they're wonderful devices.

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Christian Corti
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 3:14 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Need pointers on Oscilloscopes

On Fri, 9 Jun 2006, Tony Duell wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, I love my old Tekky 555, but I really don't think
> this sort of instrument is good for a beginner who doesn't want to learn
> how to repair valve circuitry and 'scopes in general. They are very
> maintainable, and the manuals are excellent, but since they're over 40
> years old, you are going to have to do some work on them.

My experiences with a 555 are *very* good. Found one on a scrap heap three 
years ago, and someone picked the power valves (and the funny diode 
2AS15-A) and their sockets out of the power supply (and cut the wires). It 
took me some time to get replacement valves and rewire the power supply 
around the sockets, but in the end, the scope worked like a charm! The 
traces (it's a real dual beam, not dual trace) are sharper and finer than 
everything else I've seen so far (mostly "modern" equipment like Hamegs or 
HPs). We use it here e.g. to adjust the heads on RK05 drives or to measure 
the signals on our LGP-30s (we have two working now!).
(Some pictures are on http://computermuseum-stuttgart.de/dev/tek555, you 
can click on the pictures to see more)

Christian