I couldn't resist... I bought the hundred buck 485 on ebay and it arrived today. I wish everything that got shipped to me was packed this well:
It came with some goodies, too... a 50 ohm feed-through, a 93 ohm feed-through, and a couple of 50 ohm terminations along with two scope probes and two copies of the original operators manual.
And after looking it over, I decided to plug it in and see what happened. Here's the calibration output of the scope, running to both channels:
And here's a 2Vpp 100MHz signal from my 6061, also running to both channels:
On first blush, it works pretty well but there are a few issues: the vertical input switch deck is a little wonky and the vertical position pot on channel a is both hard to turn and a little loose in the mounting. I am guessing the scope was dropped, or something dropped on it, at some point. The fan sounds like it is had a rough life. I have a note in to the seller to see how he'd like to address them.
I don't know what the intended market was but I'd guess field service. I like the scope layout and features. I don't like the switching power supply or custom ICs, which make it harder to fix. I may just address the problems, clean it up, and see if I can sell it for a reasonable price.