Logic Analysers

[Glen Slick]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 3:18 PM, Adrian Graham
<witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Whilst looking for better quality units I came across a couple of 'proper'
> HP/Agilent analysers, a 1663A 34 channel and 1661A 102 channel which seem
> complete apart from the chip leg grabbers. Am I right to assume some of you
> might have experience of these beasts?
>

An HP 1660 or 1670 series self-contained portable logic analyzer might
be nice to pick up if you can get a decent deal on one. The main
limitation of the 1660 series is that the sample depth is only 4K
samples per channel. The 1670 series offers deeper sample depths, and
they may sell at a higher price as a result. And of course a sub-model
with more channels is better than one with fewer channels.

For debugging something like an 8085 CPU system you could connect up
the analyzer to the CPU and if you capture traces in state mode
(address, data, and status signals clocked in by RD, WR, or INTA
edges) the 8085 inverse assembler software running on the analyzer can
decode the bus transactions into the 8085 instruction stream.

1660A - Mono CRT. 4K sample depth. Floppy only. No LAN.
1660C - Mono CRT. 4K sample depth. Hard drive. LAN optional.
1660E - Color LCD. 4K sample depth. Hard drive. LAN.

1670A - Mono CRT. 64K (optional 500K) sample depth. Hard drive. LAN.
1670D - Mono CRT. 64K (optional 1M) sample depth. Hard drive. LAN.
1670E - Color LCD. 1M sample depth. Hard drive. LAN.
1670G - Color LCD. 64K (optional 256K or 2M) sample depth. Hard drive. LAN.
(Information manually gathered from datasheets, hope it's all correct)

There are also options for built in dual channel oscilloscopes and
pattern generators.

Too bad you're not local. I could make you a good deal on a bigger
16500B system. I have more of those than I need. Unfortunately the
cost to ship one is close to or may even exceed their current market
value, just within the US.