Sadly, Vince gave me some bad news, as I had intended to buy the Tek 2232 from France which he kindly pointed out to us. I asked for his help and he agreed, only to discover that it is a seller which does not react to any messages. So the planned replacement of the mangy 465 with a 2232 or a 2236 is not happening yet. it was one of the UK co-afflicted who got me interested in the 2232 when we discussed its virtues and shortcomings in comparison to the 2430 some years ago in this thread. The fact that it can go fully analogue while still being a nice backup DSO has it's merits.
Meh.
Yep the seller still has not replied to me. As I told you via PM I truly believe he is dead, I mean for real.
Have been sending him messages regularly about another item of his, since May 24th, sent 4 messages, every time he "bumped" his ad, but never a reply. According to the messaging system we use, built into the website, he has not even READ my messages. 4 and half month and still has not connected to the website ? We do get a notification e-mail as well, whenever there is activity in the messaging system. I don't see any reason why he would put stuff for sale, yet not even log to the web site to check messages when buyers contact him... for 4+ months ! So I think he is sadly for him literally dead (it happens to a lot of people after all eh...
![Undecided :-\](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/undecided.gif.pagespeed.ce.cCZ6w-jWpR.gif)
).
So sadly whoever will be in charge of clearing his house will probably toss his gear in the trash
![Sad :(](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsad.gif.pagespeed.ic.L3FGyzQrjB.png)
Yeah the 2232 is a lovely scope, at least I love it. For general purpose work it's great. I love those hybrid scopes, very versatile.
Mine used to be my daily driver, but then after storage for a year due to my house builder problems, it developed a problem with the CRT focus. Impossible to ficus the beam anymore. The control does still react, but the adjustment window it offors has shifted from " crisp to blurry " to now "blurry to EXTREMELY blurry". So it's become unusable because of that. Probably a simple fix, I will definitely fix it at some point, but since I had another hybrid ready to replace it on the spot, a Philips / Fluke PM3394A, I have not had an urgent need to fix the 2232. Plus the PM3394A though similar in concept, is slightly more recent design, early '90's, and it shows. More refined overall (silent SMPS to start with), more capable (4x200MHz vs2x100Mhz), more memory (32K vs 4K), automatic measurements (2232 doesn't have any), and cursors that work both in analog and digital mode. 2232 the cursors are not available in analog mode. Also more reliable. so for all these reasons I ended up keeping using the Philips rather than the 2232.
Of course it's never all black and white. The 2232, well any Tek, has a big advantage of the Philips : intuitive / user friendly controls and menus.
The Philips have now been using for 3 years maybe, and every time I want to press a button do whatever, I first look at the myriad of push buttons presented to me, an ocean of them, and start "scanning" all of them, wondering where the fuck is the button that I need to do this and that " !
also, probing a Philips, all the rotary knobs you see, are not pots but encoders. The "acceleration" is badly implemented in S/W. It's either way too slow, almost inactive, if you turn it a normal pace, and if you try to crank it fast, suddenly it accelerates 10 times too much. So you end up spending a lot of back and forth to adjust simple things like vertical position or brightness, whereas in a Tek with simple analog pots, it's intuitive and takes a split second.
So I would say the PM3394 is an overall much better scope hence I keep using it, but it's a bit awkward to use and I miss the Tek for its ease of use.
The PM3394 is also usually much more expensive than the 2232, and harder to find in average.
I got mine for only 150 Euros in perfect working condition, so it was a good deal. Soon after I found the 4x100Mhz little brother, the POM3384, for only 30 Euros, untested, 100% unknown condition. turned out it's in perfect condition cosmetically and electrically, everything works 100% on it, so much so that I have never felt the need to open up either of these scopes to this day !
So I would say keep an eye open for both the 2232 AND the PM33XX series, both are worth it IMHO...