HP 54200D oscope practically worthless?

[Eric Smith]

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 12:25 PM Alexander Huemer via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 02:01:50PM -0400, William Sudbrink via cctalk
> wrote:
> > I picked up one of these in a batch of electronics.  Is it worth
> > repairing/investigating?
>
> The scope does what it is supposed to, you get a time-domain
> visualization of voltage.
> Though, they are awkward to use due to the lack of rotary encoders.
> Scaling horizontally or vertically requires you to go into a menu,
> navigate to the right option, do the actual scaling and go back.
> It's better than no scope at all, but not exactly the model you'd hunt.
>

These appear to be derived from the 1630/1631 logic analyzers, some models
of which have 'scope capability, which works as you've described. They must
have decided to offer models with only the scope and without the logic
analzyer (except for a digital triggering option), which seems like a bad
idea. Probably why I'd never heard of these before.

At the time they were current (early 1980s), the 1630/1631 family were
fairly reasonable logic analyzers, but the 1650/16500, 1660, 1670/16700,
etc. are far better. I wouldn't recommend that anyone _buy_ a 1630/1631
family logic analyzer at this late date, but if someone is giving one
away...