[time-nuts] A little quick advice, please

[Magnus Danielson]

On 10/31/2010 02:35 PM, William H. Fite wrote:
> 'morning, folks,
>
> I was just on a verge of purchasing a Tek TDS1012 scope when a friend
> suggested that I could save a chunk of change by buying a BitScope. Although
> I've been aware of PC scopes, I never really looked into them.  The specs
> look pretty good (the fact that I was looking at an entry-level Tek will
> give you some idea of my needs).
>
> Anyone have any experience with BitScope or other of the low-end PC scopes?

Earlier experience with PC based boards is that their life-span is 
limited due to software and hardware support reasons. Not all software 
has survived from Win95 for instance. How many computers still have 
ISA-bus? You run into all kinds of configuration hazzle rather than 
measuring things.

So my personal experience is that it isn't as good as a free-standing 
box, ready-to-go.

However, looking at BitScope they have a number of things done 
differently which counteracts my comment. They have support for various 
Windows AND various Linuxes. They also have the source-code, so you can 
recompile it. With some effort it can be maintained, but without 
reverse-engineering it. Also, the hardware interface is USB which seems 
to be a fairly long-term interface. It looks like it will be around 
another 10 years at least.

For many uses, I would still prefer the old oscilloscope interface if I 
have one oscilloscope (I have several, ranging from 70thies up to the 
90thies) but do value the possibility to interact with the scope in 
various ways and more direct means to control it isn't a bad feature.

So my advice is that you need to figure out how you want to work, what 
will be the best way of working. Can you lock up a computer at the 
lab-bench? Do you have the screen-space to get all your data up 
alongside the scope?

I would end up with both... eventually.

Cheers,
Magnus