Digital oscilloscope

[Nick]

Hi all
I've just bought a Philips PM3305 at what I believe was a reasonable price. From what I have researched it appears to be a decent scope from the spec.

Any thoughts?

Best Regards

Not a bad scope but the digital section is very slow - only 4M samples/sec, so bandwidth in digital mode is severely limited. Looking at the spec, the a/d converters work at a maximum of 2M samples/sec - these are used to digitise the screen which is 8bit x 4000...meaning that the fastest scan that can be digitised is 2mS (4000 conversions at 2MS/s). As there are 10 divisions on the screen, that's 200uS/div which is pretty slow.

Note that it has a Rifa 220nF, 250V X cap (C101) that is prone to letting smoke escape. If not replaced already, might be an idea to do so... There are comments around that C101 is still live even if the scope is switched off at the front, so some folk have put a real on-off switch on the back, or just don't leave it plugged in with power.

Service manual attached.