Oscilloscope

[Hampus1982]

Hi!

I have been given an older oscilloscope, a Philips PM3230

http://www.messmuseum.de/philipspm3230.htm

I have never used a scope before, and I dont know if I ever will need to, but since I've got it for free... It may be handy sometimes!

You people that have experience of scopes, do you think this scope is any good? The test probes are missing... as far as I have understand probes are standard non-custom things, is that correct?

/Hampus

[DrZarkov]

It will be very helpfull! Once you get used to it. you can't imganie how you've done it before without a 'scope. Your Philips is very good. It has a common connection for probes. Luckily the probes became very cheap currently, at ebay there are some chinese dealers selling them for less than 10 EUR.

And two other uses of that mighty machine:
a) There are circuits to use it a as an NBTV-monitor, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIBl7CqgdYo

b)directly connected to a common soundcard you can watch funny demos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1eNjUgaB-g

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlZH1p0E ... re=related

[Steve Anderson]

I have never used a scope before, and I dont know if I ever will need to,....Hampus

You will need to, believe me! Once you get to grips to using one, not having one is like having and arm chopped off! To me you can't do electronics without out one. I would rather have the cheapest crappy scope there is rather than the best ever multimeter if I had to make a choice.

There are a number of on-line tutorials for oscilloscopes, for example:-

https://www.cs.tcd.ie/courses/baict/bac/jf/labs/scope/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscopes

Plus dozens of books, usual sources, e-bay, amazon etc..

As Volker said, your one is fine for NBTV, it's not the fastest but plenty good enough. Oscilloscopes of this era are very much the same, the same controls and functions will be found on all instruments (somewhere).

Steve A.

[Klaas Robers]

And even more: this is till an analogue oscilloscope. The advantage is that what you see is really the wave form that is available.

More modern oscilloscopes are digital instruments. You never can be sure that what you see is the read wave form. Besides that there are quite some settings that a digital oscilloscope needs, that are just a nuisance in the beginning.

I hope for you that your oscilloscope workes and is not defect. Because repairing an defect oscilloscope without a working oscilloscope is a very difficult task. Your oscilloscope is a dual trace oscilloscope, that is that you can monitor two wave forms at the same time. Normally you will see two green lines on the screen, each showing you a changing voltage.

To start with you don't need probes. Make yourself two pieces of coax cable, say half a meter long, at one end a BNC connector, to connect it to the oscilloscope, at the other end with two short leads with crocodile clips, one for ground (black), the other for the voltage to be monitored (red).

[Hampus1982]

Picked up the scope today, I was very impressed about it's state. It has been used for hobby works, so it hadnt been used much. Look as new, not even a scratch! The original manuals was still there, an english manual and a swedish translation with the basic things to know, and a dust cover with Philips logo on. Couldn't barely wait to try it.

Since it hadnt been used for a while, I powered it up with a "dim bulb tester", but nothing happened. I cheched the resistance over the main plug, infinity. Hmm... feared that the transformer was bad, the fuse, wiring and switch was checked ok. Checked the schematics, there should be another fuse, but I couldn't find it. After some investigation I understand that this is a temp fuse, I found it on the transformer. It was open. Bypassed it with a wire for the moment and it show some signs of life, but nothing showed on the screen. HV oscillator sound was at least heard. Turns out that a E88CC wasn't glowing, I cleaned the tube socket and, well, it seems that I got an scope of my own now! Gonna do some unneccesery testing tonight... it's like a new toy

[dominicbeesley]

Hi Humpus,

I've got a PM3230 too, it is an excellent scope for NBTV work having two Z mod inputs so you can use it to build a telly for the price of a single transitor and a few resistors (to amplify the signal) and watch the picture and use the other channel to look at various other signals at the same time.

It is a genuine dual trace scope too (with a CRT with two seperate gun assemblies).

A few things to watch on this scope:

If I recall correctly there are some mains filter capacitors on mine which were leaky and gave me a few shocks (my workshop's earthing wasn't great - long story) they can just be cut out!

The temperature fuse went on mine - to fix it properly you should get some low metling point solder and then the little spring that comprises the fuse squeezed together and held closed with a blob of solder in the two overlapping circles - like you though I have bypassed it while waiting for the solder and never bothered to fix it!

The z-mod inputs (at the back) are coupled to the -2000V cathodes with two capacitors which were leaky on mine - I replaced them with modern equivalents and now the z-mod inputs work well and the focus / intensity controls behave themselves properly!

I've got a service manual, in Dutch, for this scope PM me your email address and I'll send you a copy.

Cheers

Dom