HP 35660A alternative

[MarkoAnte]

Hi,

does anybody know if there are some alternatives to HP 35660A / HP 3561A? Maybe some usb based pc thing? I need it to go form DC-100Khz ish and it needs to have good resolution/memory depth so I could do better measurements then with a scope (that is 8bit 2Mpts memory depth).

Best regards,
Marko

[bozidarms]

Hi Marko,

i can recommend a HP 3569A - portable hand-held Real-time Dynamic Signal Analyzer.
I know, it is very old instrument, but one stand-alone, incredible  sensitive, accurate and reliable analyzer.
Technical characteristics are classes better than proclamated.
Among other things, for me is the most fascinating the ability to measure levels down to almost nV range, very useful for
evaluating a noise floor  in audio equipment - you can get  precision and consistent results on  HP 3400A level, if not better.
One almost forgotten gem!

Regards

[tec5c]

DSA's aren't cheap. Period.

Any "usb based pc thing" is going to have poor specs, though perhaps it will suffice for your needs? Take a look at this http://www.adlinktech.com/PD/web/PD_detail.php?cKind=&pid=1297&seq=&id=&sid=&source=&utm_source=&category=Data-Acquisition_USB-DAQ

I would opt for a 35670A or SR780 (both can be found on eBay, every now and then for a very good price) if you're serious about low frequency measurements.

[MarkoAnte]

@tec5c the problem is that there just don't seem to be many DSA on sale here in EU. When one come on Ebay they go for quite a lot. The one that came up (almost a year ago) was a HP 3561, with 1 bad ram (according to the error code). It starter at 200 euro-sish and ended up above 1400 euro in the last seconds. Ty for the ADLINK link, I will look at it but it does not seem like what I'm after.

Basically I want to do a FFT of the current into a 3 phase PFC that runs at a variable switching frequency, with the maximum being 50 kHz. With a sampling frequency of 128kS/s it seems on the low side. Also the input range is wrong.

[tszaboo]

You did not tell us your budget.

[MarkoAnte]

I was thinking around 1000 Euros, but this is flexible a bit. I'm mostly asking because I don't want to buy a 20 year old machine and find out that for a comparable price I could get a newer (maybe usb) device.