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Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s


Tektronix TDS520C 500 MHz 2CH 1GS/s Oscilloscope w/InstaV
This scope is InstaVu equipped. That is, when in that mode the display/display record updates at an extremely fast rate, but mostly dead time between acquisition and transfer to memory is eliminated. The probability of observing a fast transients goes from minutes/hours for a non-InstaVu scope to seconds/minutes with InstaVu..
Outside of InstaVu, this scope about equivalent, sampling power wise to a 54XA, in one or two channel mode. If you need color, stick with a TDS544A or better, if you need to display 4 channels a 54Xx. Bare in mind however, compared to say a 544A or earlier, this scope is MUCH more powerful in detecting signal anomalies
I replace the electrolytic surface mount capacitors on the front panel control board, this scope has no other SMD electrolytic capacitors. That makes this a much more reliable scope than the 5XXA or earlier scopes.
A bit about the channels on this scope. This scope has ch1, ch2, aux1, and aux2. You can only display two channels at a time. Each channel appears to be a full implementations (earlier 520 had fewer channel setting for aux1/2, as I recall). Any third channel can be used for triggering. This scope has two 500 MS/s sampler. 5XXA or earlier scopes had either 2 or 4 250 MSs samplers, depending on the scope being a 52Xx or 54Xx.
Measured bandwidth on all channels were 680 MHz or better.
Passes all power on, self tests, and self calibration routines. Minor blemishes indicative of normal lab use but not abuse. This is a nice B/W oscilloscope with 500 MHz bandwidth and 1 GS/s real time sampling on one channel, 500MS/s on two channels; equivalent time sampling rate to 100GSs on both channels.
Exception: Directly to the left of the floppy drive there are dings that I m not sure if they were soldering mishaps that someone cleaned up with a knife or truly dings. The floppy drive was able to store and retrieve a waveform.
Aside for the floppy drive, there are no installed options.
I copied the specs of the web somewhere. Please do your own research and verify those specs that are critical to your application.
The pictures depict the scopes condition and the scopes pass status in the various menus. Blurriness is a photo effect and can be ignored; this display is bright and clear. Also with the flash on the scope tends to look too tooth paste white, or too yellow with the flash off. The flash will also overwhelm the display and make it look near dead. Again photo effects.
A bit of TDS trivia. The early 500 series scopes were for general purpose lab or bench use, these later branched out to become 500 AND 700 series lab scopes (generally more options installed on a 700 than a standard 500). The 500/700 scopes could do advanced waveform processing such as equivalent time sampling/repetitive, InstaVu/DPO and the like. The 600 series were fast samplers (but small record size), high raw sampling rates on all channels for single shot acquisition, no sharing of samplers (interleave); you can choose to do averaging, but otherwise all acquisition is real time, all channels, and all time base settings.
Basic Specification (Copied off the Web):
Performance Characteristics of the TDS520C
Programmability/Connectivity of the TDS520C



Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s Tektronix TDS520C 500 mhz 2+2CH 1GS/s w/instavu, $$$'s