So the other day I mentioned that the man in brown brought me some gifts. Some as in plural. Well the gift I didn't mention is an oscilloscope. I've had it on my wishlist for a while, but never wanted to spend the $$. New ones are in the range of $400+ and who wants to spend that kind of money on something that doesn't even make any noise?

I've kept my eye on used scopes on Ebay, but those are either $200 or they are sold as-is and untested. Well I finally took the plunge on an as-is untested scope.

I opened the box and powered it up and at first I couldn't get it to do anything but crackle and smell funny. After a little fooling around I realized I was going to need a manual. So I bought one of those on Ebay too. Using the manual I got a little closer, but it was not working nearly correctly. I did some troubleshooting and replaced a couple of parts and it finally came to life.

This is what it looks like right now when I feed it a sine wave:



Obviously, that's not a good sine, but at least I'm in the ball park now. I should be able to figure some things out and get it where it needs to be.

Note the stack of Post-its under the front left corner. Without it in place, the screen goes blank and the crackling sound comes back. I spent an hour or so trying to figure out what's causing it, but no luck.