The first rule of TEA - never sell! Selling eventually leads to regret.
I suffer this regularly but will never learn!
Well it is easier to sell modern cheap Chinese test gear that didn't really perform up to your expectations anyway, so you are happy to never see it again.
I'm going to be honest: I recently bought a DS1054Z and I'm not totally enamored with it. If I was going to sit and do this for a living then I'd be happy with it as it's a tool but as I said earlier, it lacks soul. Plus it sounds like an angry wasp. I'm not sure I'm too happy about the noise on it either. One thing I genuinely miss is the delay sweep feature which there isn't a good solution to on the Rigol. Basically I say "hey that's a bit fuzzy", set the delay sweep to lowest time, pop the timebase selector and there you go, it's oscillating! Rigol: bring on knob-fuckery and then you have to go back to where you were which is difficult. That leads to be just hitting "auto" followed by two channels showing 50Hz because the probes are just dangling and disappointment.
Its probably the hardest for the old name brand equipment. Especially when its in particularly good cosmetic condition and fully working, but at the same time you just bought a new piece of equipment that does the same job with better performance at 1/4 the size and weight.... but the old boatanchor has that lovely shiny chrome HP badge on it.
My wife LOVES the DS1054Z because of the size. My bench is in the corner of the living room. She's not going to like the HP when she gets back after the weekend. I actually picked the 1740A up on the way back from dropping her off
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
I would indeed test that but I am stuck with a ~10nS rise time output here. I suppose it's a good excuse to build a Jim Williams pulse generator...
Don't bother; there are much easier alternatives with modern logic.
A 10p 74lvc1g1* will be more than adequate. If you add a 143ohm series resistor, the combination will have a 150ohm output. Put three of those in parallel and you will have a very clean 50ohm generator that operates with a Vcc between 1.5 and 5V. I constructed one, and an indirect measurement gives the risetime of ~600ps; someone else measured it with a modern scope and it looked like it was 300ps or less. The only trick is to make sure they are very well decoupled!
Slightly more "exotic" is the output from an Analog Devices comparator; the risetime is ~50ps. There's another thread on this site, and the author is selling them.
Thanks - looks like an interesting solution and considerably less crap than having to step up the voltage to 90v or so first. Will do some research and build one. I have a couple of nice BNC connectors floating around so I can couple it directly to the scope. Might even buy a nice little box
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
I must admit when I cracked it open, the timebase did leave me a bit "whaaat?" in this case because the board wobbles when you turn the knob. I will probably leave it be for now and just buy another 1740A to keep in the cupboard just in case ![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
The wobbles don't worry me too much, and should be minimal if the supporting "doughnuts" are positioned correctly. Remember IBM PC ISA boards!
I do indeed. My father was an importer of white box ISA card crap from Taiwan in the late 1980s. We had the little foam padded boxes stacked up to the ceiling in the house. On the positive side, free PC
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
Alas no 485 has ever come my way for a price I'd pay or I'd snap it up instantly
... still slightly regretting selling my 475 which was in mint condition a couple of years ago. That was second best to the 485.
I paid £50 for mine, but I had to diagnose and recap the PSU, including the 15V tant caps on a 13V line that isn't shown on the PSU board!
On a second one, now sold for a bargain £150, the resistor inside an IC had failed, so I soldered a SMD resistor across nearby terminals. Pleasingly the only visible issue was that the risetime was 1.25ns instead of 1ns; yes I did inform the buyer!
You had some good luck there!
Next on my list is a Tektronix 7000 series (7504 would be nice due to construction) and 7L12 if I can find one. I figured I can probably get both for less than a Rigol DSA.
Now I'm going to think about selling the DS1054Z...