dwight elvey wrote:
I've only used a logic analyzer twice in 30+ years
of
fixing all kinds of electronics. I find them time consuming
and not much good for general debugging. In order to
use one right, you need to have a rough idea as to what
is wrong. By that time, I have been able to narrow it down,
that far, I can quickly trace it with a normal scope. Not saying
there were not times I needed a logic analyzer, it just
that when I did use it, I knew what I was up against.
Both times, it was related to tracing down a design bug
and not just a bad part.
I've used logic analyzers a *lot*, and have found that they almost
always save me a great deal of time. However, I've mostly used them on
equipment where I *completely* understood the hardware design, either
because I was involved in designing it, or because I'd spent a great
deal of time studying the hardware documentation. I think a logic
analyzer would be considerably less useful trying to diagnose a failure
of equipment of a design with which I was not intimately familiar.
The other use case I have for them is reverse-engineering a working
piece of equipment. I'm not trying to repair a fault, but rather to
learn how an undocumented piece of hardware works.
Eric