Heathkit 5Mhz Oscilloscope - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: bveenema
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 01:13:34 am
content: Someone made me an offer to sell me this oscilloscope.http://www.testelectronics.com/used/heathkitiod4540.htmIt's a 5 MHz deal. I've never heard of Heathkit and 5 MHz seems low to me. Is it even worth anything? This would be my first and probably only oscilloscope.Thanks

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 02:02:04 am
content: How much are they selling it for? Heathkit is pretty well known, but this model is an antique. I wouldn't pay very much for it if you want it as a tool rather than a museum piece. Depending on where you live, you should be able to pick up a decent dual trace 20 MHz scope for less than $50 and it'll be considerably better.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 02:12:43 am
content: 5mhz willseverelylimit what you can use it for.It's only going to be able to show you waveforms up to around 500khzPeople give away oscilloscopes better than thatSo i would say no, not worth buying unless you like antiques.

author: vtl
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 06:07:51 am
content: What kind of work would you be doing with it? 5Mhz is pretty much useless even if you were just probing microcontroller digital logic.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 07:14:27 am
content: Quote from: Psi on July 15, 2011, 02:12:43 am5 MHz is slow, but this is a real analog 5 MHz scope, and it will show a 5 MHz waveform mostly fine. This is not a crappy DSO with a 5 MS/s ADC that calls it 5 MHz of bandwidth.Still, I agree. I would only get this for a museum, not for everyday use. It might be OK for analog only audio and AM radio, but it isn't going to do much for digital electronics.

author: Excavatoree
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 03:15:42 pm
content: Ancient?Museum piece?Wow. What a way to make me feel old. I put one of these* together for Electronics class my senior year of HighSchool. I put about 90-95 percent of it together, but graduating seniors got to skip the last few days of class, so someone else got to do the last bit and fire it up. He told me it worked fine.* - close enough

author: slburris
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 04:12:38 pm
content: Heathkit is actually quite famous for the electronic kits theyproduced until the mid 90's I think. For some background, see:http://www.heathkit-museum.com/I built about 40 kits, and still have nearly all of them. Thereis a Heathkit collectors community, especially for the ham radioside of things.On to the scope. I actually have this scope too, it was my firstscope that I built as a boy. It probably has value as a Heathkitcollectors item, but as a test instrument I wouldn't pay morethan $10 for it.Does it work? Well, yes, but it's not a great scope. Mine atleast doesn't always trigger well. It's hard to get the tracealigned on the screen as you do that with the chassis outsideof the enclosure. When you put it back in the enclosure, the CRTgets slightly tweaked and the trace is no longer level.Is it useful? For audio frequencies, sure. For today's digital logic?Well, maybe not. But the biggest problem is that it's a single tracescope. Without two traces you can't see the relationship of onesignal to another, and that's a significant loss.On the other hand, if you really want to learn about how scopes workand be able to tinker with the internals of one, this can't be beat.Heathkit made a converter box to turn a single trace scope intoa dual trace -- I have this box somewhere, but can't remember whatit's called. Yeah, that sort of worked.Keep in mind that you can often find top notch Tektronix scopeswith 100Mhz bandwidth for <$200 on Ebay and they are far farmore capable than this scope.Scott

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 06:03:44 pm
content: Quote from: vtl on July 15, 2011, 06:07:51 amIt does annoy me when people say that sort of thing, because it gives nubes the wrong idea. In reality, a 5MHz 'scope is fine for audio and to some extent even some switch mode power supplies and MCU circuits. A 5MHz 'scope will still show you a 4MHz clock signal, it' just won't show you the rise/fall times: it'll tell you, you've got 4MHz there, which is all you need most of the time.

author: bveenema
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 06:06:26 pm
content: Thanks for all the replies. I was really only considering it because I'm working on a motor controller project and need something quick. Not much has turned up in my area but I think I'll wait for at least a 20 MHz scope to surface. Not having dual trace is really a killer for me too.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 11:11:56 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on July 15, 2011, 07:14:27 amok yeah, if it actually has 5mhz of real bandwidth then it's not as bad as i was thinking.but i still question if it's worth paying money for when, for any price (even $1), he could probably find something better.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 15, 2011, 11:47:51 pm
content: 5MHz is certainly much better than no scope, but it should be extremely cheap based on the limited specs, feature set and quality. Something like a Tek 465, which cost something like an order of magnitude more at the time, is also readily available for fairly affordable prices. These are much better quality (best in their class at the time, as opposed to hobbyist level) and have much more features (bandwidth, dual channel, excellent triggering).If you can get it for something like $5-10 it may be OK, at least for a while. Don't spend any serious amount of money on it though, unless you're really desperate, save that for a better scope.