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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2024 21:39:40 +0000
From: John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,sci.electronics.repair
Subject: Re: Favourite Test Equipment
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2024 14:37:59 -0700
Organization: Highland Tech
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On Sat, 06 Apr 2024 21:39:25 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 05 Apr 2024 19:37:27 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 00:35:46 +0200, Klaus Vestergaard Kragelund
>><klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On 05-04-2024 23:22, john larkin wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 16:26:49 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 4/5/2024 3:49 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>>> On a sunny day (Thu, 4 Apr 2024 12:20:19 -0400) it happened bitrex
>>>>>> <user@example.net> wrote in <660ed343$0$1258343$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My most useful old machine dollar for dollar is my 8012B pulse generator!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <https://imgur.com/a/2GaSZVq>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nice, real components...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> $50 "not working." It was just a burned-out pilot lamp and dirty controls.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mm 50 dollars,
>>>>>> even today with people using dollars for wallpaper,
>>>>>> buys you a nice pulse generator on ebay..
>>>>>
>>>>> It cost $1700 USD in the 1987 catalog, about $4500 equivalent today!
>>>>>
>>>>>> 555 timer works fine too
>>>>>> Or use sox in Linux for all sort of audio, including sweeps:
>>>>>>    https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/howto-sox-audio-tool-as-a-signal-generator.4242/
>>>>>> or just use a Raspberry Pi as signal generator:
>>>>>>    https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html#freq_pi
>>>> 
>>>> Our DDG is about $4K, addmittedly over the top for a home lab.
>>>> 
>>>>     http://highlandtechnology.com/DSS/P500DS.shtml
>>>> 
>>>> I love my beat-up old unit on my bench.  Timing and levels are
>>>> brutally quantitative.
>>>> 
>>>I bought a Siglent DDS SDG6022X for 1300USD, 200MHz thingie. I knew 
>>>forehand that it could be hacked to 500MHz, so "saved" 3000 USD for 1 
>>>hours work :-)
>>>
>>>https://www.batronix.com/shop/waveform-generator/Siglent-SDG6022X.html
>>>
>>>EEVBLOG has hacking details if anyone is interested...
>>
>>We bought a few Rigol 300 MHz 4-chan scopes and insisted that they
>>throw in the 500 MHz upgrade.
>>
>>I remember when FFT was an extra-cost feature. Now it's free.
>
>Excuse me for being a bit slow on the uptake here, but it seems to me
>that there are a *lot* of products which are fundamentally all
>manufactured to the same spec - but then deliberately crippled unless
>you pay some sort of ransom to have them 'unlocked' as it were. Would
>that be correct or am I being too cynical?

It's very common to have bits in an eeprom that enable expensive
features or, in the case of oscilloscopes, do or don't software damage
the bandwidth.

We do that on many of our products, not usually quantitative specs but
features. Our best digital delay generator has a frames/trains mode
where delays and widths can be reprogrammed every trigger, from a
list, and can make multiple output pulses per trigger. Setting that
bit costs about $1500. We justify that as paying for our development
cost. We're selling software.

If there's competition, there is pressure to eventually price that
sort of bit cheap or free, like the FFT case.