Buying Complementary CROs

[Wuerstchenhund]

In Europe, I do not think it is possible to find free or very cheap CRO's.

Of course it depends on your country (Europe is big) but in most countries there are enough places to find analog scopes free or for little money, i.e. ham radio swap meets, flea markets, or (at least in the UK) places like Gumtree.

Often enough people find some old scope in the attic/basement, i.e. as a leftover from a former hobby or because someone died.

Sometimes you can get them from schools who may have upgraded to newer scopes but have left the old scopes somewhere in the basement "just in case". Years ago I got several Hamegs this way.

Then there are places like the EEV forum.

About ten years ago, industries have gone to digital and they sell very good analog oscilloscopes by whole pallets at a very low price.

You'll find that most industries (aside from small business maybe) have moved to digital scopes much longer than 10 years ago.

But the majority of these scopes probably moved into private hands over the years, and there are still lots of them around, often without seeing much use or completely forgotten.

High end analog oscilloscopes have become rare ... looks like who has one guard it as a treasure.

Understandable, as analog scopes haven't been "high end" for about a quarter of a century. Roughly since the 90's the high end is digital, and analog scopes were merely lower mid-range and entry level scopes.

In my experience German ebay is particularly expensive (often much more so than other countries' ebay) so I wouldn't focus my search to what's available there. There are plenty of other opportunities, all it needs is putting a bit effort in.

[nctnico]

In Europe, I do not think it is possible to find free or very cheap CRO's.

Of course it depends on your country (Europe is big) but in most countries there are enough places to find analog scopes free or for little money, i.e. ham radio swap meets, flea markets, or (at least in the UK) places like Gumtree.

Often enough people find some old scope in the attic/basement, i.e. as a leftover from a former hobby or because someone died.

But those oscilloscopes are usually old junk. At some point I bought an HP180 (IIRC) with a 300MHz plugin. That turned out to be a pile of junk (FUBAR) and loss of money. I have learned my lesson from that and in general don't buy equipment which is more than 15 years old.

[oldway]

Some good CRO's 
Philips PM3233: 10Mhz 2 beams long decay phosphor.
Tektronix 2235A: 100Mhz
Philips/Fluke PM3094 200Mhz 4 channels.
BBC M6004 = Hameg HM 1005 :100Mhz
Hameg HM605: 60Mhz
Hameg HM1505: 150Mhz
HP1740A: 100Mhz
HP1725A: 275Mhz
My workhorse is the HM605....I have...four HM605 

[Howardlong]

Some good CRO's 

Yep, that's scope porn for sure.

[Wuerstchenhund]

In Europe, I do not think it is possible to find free or very cheap CRO's.

Of course it depends on your country (Europe is big) but in most countries there are enough places to find analog scopes free or for little money, i.e. ham radio swap meets, flea markets, or (at least in the UK) places like Gumtree.

Often enough people find some old scope in the attic/basement, i.e. as a leftover from a former hobby or because someone died.

But those oscilloscopes are usually old junk.

Of course it's old junk. I mean, what would you expect from kit that's on average a quarter of a century old? But hey, if it's really cheap/free and working, why not go for it? It could still be fun.

I have learned my lesson from that and in general don't buy equipment which is more than 15 years old.

Understandable (I generally do the same) but this mostly means DSOs only (with some exceptions, i.e. some Hameg analog scopes which IIRC were still built after 2000)

[Wuerstchenhund]

My belief is that for most users if you could only have one scope today and for the future it should most likely be a digital scope.  At the same time, I think some people who enjoy oscilloscopes would appreciate owning a nice vintage analog scope, especially if it didn't cost too much and it remained reliable (probably the toughest part of the equation).

That's exactly what I'm saying. Nothing wrong with getting an analog scope for fun or as a pet project if its free/cheap.

But spending serious money on an analog scope for use as a primary scope is money fluushed down the drain.

[oldway]

It amuses me to see how some people act: they buy very sophisticated measuring devices (eg multimeters 6.5 digits) they do not need, and then they try to find applications for this device.

I am of the Apollo generation where we did a lot with few resources.

For a hobbyist, an analog oscilloscope let him do many things in analog, power electronics and troubleshooting.
It even has some advantages: no aliasing, ease of use, ...

For measurements of time and frequency, I use a counter.

Measurements of rise and fall times does not usually require high precision and can easily be done with a calibrated analog ocilloscope.

For professional use or digital electronics or any applications requiring memory, there is no discussion possible: digital oscilloscope is the only choice.

[Howardlong]

It amuses me to see how some people act: they buy very sophisticated measuring devices (eg multimeters 6.5 digits) they do not need, and then they try to find applications for this device.

Actually I don't get the 6.5 DMM thing either, but I'm willing to be educated.

I am of the Apollo generation where we did a lot with few resources

I think I've mentioned before, I used to debug 50+ chip digital designs with an LED+resistor and a 1k ohm per volt multimeter back in the mid to late 70s when I was a teenager. Very occasionally I'd have access to a scope, usually single trace, and a bandwidth of about a meg. With an LED, you can get a reasonably good idea if something's oscillating and the duty cycle of a digital signal by comparing it to Vcc. Same applies to using an analogue meter, you can measure duty cycle. You can also measure ballpark frequency with your ears, a crystal earpiece or piezo sounder and if necessary a divider.

However, it's a darned sight easier with a scope that's for sure. The concept of being able to track down bugs with deep (or even any) memory as we enjoy now on DSOs was alien to us, but we found other ways. I remember being shown how to use a delayed trigger scope to track down software bugs on my homebrew computer when I was about 13. I thought that was so awesome, but I also knew it was way beyond my reach: such test gear was easily equivalent to a couple of years' salary!

It wasn't until the 90's that I bought my first scope, a basic 20MHz Goldstar dual trace for a couple of hundred quid as I remember, but then I'd had a bit of hiatus from electronics after discovering women and booze a decade or so earlier.

[HighVoltage]

Actually I don't get the 6.5 DMM thing either, but I'm willing to be educated.

A few years ago I was also thinking the same way.
But then some of my clients required some sensitive values to be certified for Six Sigma analysis and I found myself for the first time that 4 digits was not enough and used the full 6 1/2 digits for an analysis. This still did not mean much for the real world application and 4 1/2 digits would have been plenty enough, but this was the requirement of the Six Sigma reporting. So, for the first time I used all digits of my Agilent 34401A.

It is a strange world. When I was studying, we still had analog voltmeters only and we could do everything that needed to be done with it.