Rich.Andrews wrote:
wrote in news:1102901426.296651.26940
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
Tek stayed profitable for a long time because they won a big court
fight against copycat mfr's like Hickok and Jetronix and also
because
many HP scopes triggered poorly. I would not buy any vintage Tek
box
except as a collectible or to tinker with, but they were well
built,
that's for sure. A few bucks spent at a hamfest will get you an
old
plug-in or assembly you can torment high end stores with for years
of
pleasure.
There are enough free or low cost software programs that run on
laptops that
will do the same function and do it better than the old gear. There
are some
rare exceptions of course.
Maybe you are from a distant planet where laptops have DC coupled ADCs
with the linearity and bandwidth required and hardware triggering for
sync...here on earth they just have sound card mic inputs which are
way, way short in all aspects of even the crude free-running 50's and
60's TV shop junkers like the old RCAs and Conars. There are outboard
boxes that can interface to a laptop for display/storage but they are
as expensive as a real oscilloscope and are very technician-hostile. A
PC does not does not does not constitute a piece of test equipment.
Even commercial VME/VXI and PXI solutions are good mostly for permanent
ATE setups as opposed to bench work.
Hobbyists, small scale entrepreneurs, service techs, and field
engineering people are all much better with even obsolete test
equipment than bull**** attempts to rig commodity PC hardware for
metrology.
r