I have been thinking about this discussion: I bought one of the cheap 8
channel units on Ebay and downloaded the Salee software. It works
extremely well for debugging logic issues on my pdp8/L's but it has a
few issues:
The buffer size is miniscule, and I get data overruns at higher sample
rates.
It does not do analog signal analysis, only digital. So it's great for
TTL logic, not so great for trying to figure out what's coming off the
tape head on the TU58.
So it can't work for everything, but it's an excellent introduction. My
next step up will probably be the $500 8 channel unit, that can do
analog and has a real buffer. So I wind up supporting the company anyway.
CZ