Oscilloscopes

[computer at sea]

Does anyone here know much about them?  I was just given a couple of working scopes (a B+K 2120 and a HP 1980B) without probes.

I've seen some probes on eBay that are rated for 20mhz, which is what the B+K is, and I was curious if those would work for all 20mhz oscilloscopes, or if most brands need some sort of proprietary probes.

[Oceanus - XD515]

Hi,

I find a scope very useful, but you need to understand what it is showing you on the screen.. you can use it to quickly find audio signals on a board, to see if they are DC or AC coupled.. it will pinpoint clock oscillators, frequency dividers and a whole myriad of useful stuff..

A 20Mhz scope is fine for Circuit bending and 99.9% of them have a standard BNC connector for scope probes, although some probes have an attenuator built in giving a -10X signal on the screen in respect to what you are measuring.

Cheers

Paul

[computer at sea]

Thanks Paul.

I'm excited to start learning some stuff.

[Circuitbenders]

Just to add to what Oceanus said there (too many people called paul around here  ), if you are working with anything analogue an oscilloscope is incredibly useful for trouble shooting or just seeing what waveform is going where. In this case you often don't have to necesseraly know exactly what you are seeing on the screen represents as long as you can recognise a waveform shape when you see it.

As an example, its appears that schematics for the FAT Freebass don't exist so finding separate output points at a decent level for the waveforms would have been a nightmare without using an oscilloscope so you can actually see what the signal at any point looks like.