Buying tips for the hobby

[level42]

are those CRT ?

anyway, looking at the picture, this is below my quality standard 

Yes, the picture is beamed from the lower part, see here:

http://www.tradekorea.com/product-detail/P00006737/Video_Door_Phone__SM_400_.html#

I've seen some of these and quality of the picture is indeed not the best....but if you just want to see if anything is going on its nice......and that price.......it's almost free

[Etienne MacGyver]

i guess the quality of the bare CRT is better ? its worth a try for that price..

[level42]

Yeah, I think maybe the picture quality was more bad because of the used simple cabling and it's length.

Out of technical interest only this is a nice price.

[level42]

If I'm not mistaking these are very nice for Nintendo cabs:

http://www.smallcab.net/screws-round-head-square-neck-bolt-p-395.html?osCsid=73c98ad82496ef07a9ee48aaa10bc553#.UpUexZEntwI

....and it's actually damn hard to find them even here in Europe. Great price !

[Q*ris]

Well spotted André!
Damn good price indeed but watch out for the crazy shipping/handling fees on Smallcab.
16€ of shipping/handling for ONE button to Belgium.
Aouch!

[gyruss]

If I'm not mistaking these are very nice for Nintendo cabs:

http://www.smallcab.net/screws-round-head-square-neck-bolt-p-395.html?osCsid=73c98ad82496ef07a9ee48aaa10bc553#.UpUexZEntwI

....and it's actually damn hard to find them even here in Europe. Great price !

nice, i could use one.

[level42]

Well spotted André!
Damn good price indeed but watch out for the crazy shipping/handling fees on Smallcab.
16€ of shipping/handling for ONE button to Belgium.
Aouch!

oh I knew there had to be a catch....groupbuy ? I think I need a couple for my Nintendo.

[Q*ris]

PM sent. They are sold out of them on smallcab ATM.

[level42]

Too bad I already got my birthday present....

Been trying to work with my antique Hitachi scope again but it has too many issues to be anything close to reliable.

I was looking for another old good working analogue scope but then thought about a digital scope I'd seen before when searching the KLOV forum. It is the Rigol DS1052E which is VERY affordable and offers a LOT of advantages over an old analogue scope (compact, light-weight, measuring wave forms and many many more)

http://www.batronix.com/versand/oszilloskope/Rigol-DS1052E.html






It's not like Agilent or Tektronix stuff, but it is extremely affordable and has a lot of great reviews on the net.

It is 50 Mhz, which should be enough for our hobby, but the cool thing is that with a flash-hack you could change it to a 100 Mhz scope ! (I'd only do that after the warranty period I guess...there is 3 year warranty by the way !)

It also has an X-Y mode so it's good to display vector games too (no Z input I guess, but I don't care for testing).

The idea of having a 100% reliable brand new scope with so many great features is really tempting....

[Laszo]

Really tempting indeed....

[level42]

Let me know if you're going to buy one, with ordering 2 units there is no shipping costs. Batronix has the best price I found and that company looks really trustworthy.

Sending you a PM Leo

Jeez, there are loads of hacks for this thing:

http://hackaday.com/2012/10/10/giving-the-rygol-ds1052e-scope-a-spectrum-analyzer/

50 to 100Mhz hack:
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31/update-50mhz-to-100mhz-scope-conversion/

The hack doesn't work with the latest firmwares but you can downgrade the firmware and then apply the hack...

And this is pretty awesome for us too: Play Pong on it
http://hackaday.com/2011/12/31/homebrew-on-the-rigol-ds1052e-scope/

[kroustibat]

Let me know if you're going to buy one, with ordering 2 units there is no shipping costs. Batronix has the best price I found and that company looks really trustworthy.

Batronix is really trustworthy, i did a translation of prog-express for them (thanks for the tips andre), and i got a bx48 for my work. Really cool guys

[level42]

Yeah, shame that Dutch is already done !

[Laszo]

Dammm I looked at the site...... The Rigol DS1052D is also very tempting.... Any opinions?

[level42]

Yes but above my budget. Reviews also seem to say it's not ideal as a Logic Analyzer.

You know, on this video you see the inside of the 1052E:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO5iGwHpmHc

At.5.58 he mentions a 40 pin header that he doesn't know what it's for. If you look at the location, I guess it's pretty clear that this is the location where the 1052D has it's logic analyzer inputs ! So I bet that on the 1052D there is either just a flat cable or maybe there is on extra add-on board there...
If it would be the first than that would be very interesting because maybe the E could be flashed to a D (just speculating here !)

By the way, this video is nice, but how-on-earth can a guy like him NOT mention what caps they used ?!?!?! I think it is MUCH more likely they used el-cheapo caps than that they tried to find some bootleg copies of the necessary chips (IF these exist at all).

What DID happen is that another Chinese company copies the Rigols. The brand is Atten.

Anyway, I am in doubt if the logic analyzer part would be worthwhile for me. Any insights in this ? (Robin, Speleo ?)