Question of the Month: How often do you use a Handheld Oscilloscope?

Maybe I am. Haha I think I'm just in groups where 99% of the content I see is people looking for help with very specific issues and not really reviewing products :p

But I'm glad to hear that the idea has gathered some interest! I'll try to put together a post, hopefully around this weekend.

Used my Multicomp Pro MP720014 today in a training class.

Agree, there's lots of reviews outside RoadTests.

I think people, if they have time, often write a quick review or kickstart a conversation if they come across a product where the information might be helpful to others, too.

I'd like to see it. I think that finding glitchy waveforms is more difficult on current handhelds - while other functionality matches bench scope capabilities better.

So that would be an interesting exercise.

>  I don't see people "reviewing" or comparing products outside of Roadtests 

U blind ?

I think it's a good idea. 'Test and Tools' sounds like a good place for it. That's a good section that may also deserve to be directly navigatable from the main menu, although it isn't.

I've been thinking more about this topic, particularly as I was using a handheld scope the other day, and decided to compare the experience of debugging a glitchy signal directly against one of the bench scopes I have.
Considering that I have a hand-ful of hand-held (heh) scopes (none of them fancy, with a couple of them being extremely "hobby" level in fact) perhaps I could make a quick comparison / mini review of their strengths / weaknesses and how they are useful to me? Would that be interesting?  And if so, what would be the best section for that?  ("Test & Tools" seems to be the section, but maybe there's a better fit)

Now, I don't see people "reviewing" or comparing products outside of Roadtests or things they've won here, so maybe it's a bad idea?. Don't know Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I had the separated lens issue too. It was just rattling around inside the player. I initially thought it was a stray bead from somewhere and almost threw it out : ) Lens-cleaned it, and then put it in place with a tiny bit of superglue.

Are yes the grating adjustment unless the laser was new then don't touch.

and if wanted to to adjust the RF level i would clean under the lens first 

then of course the upside down laser on the six pack cartridge where the lens would fall off

your scan from the service manual shows the first 3 cycles  

when looking at the waveform of sick spindle motor  it is obvious after 20+ cycles 

Nice-looking instrument. I still miss using the first 'scope I got familiar with, which was a Hitachi 'storage scope.

I had to repair a Pioneer CD player the other day (30-years old!), the service manual mentioned an RF adjustment, from what I can tell it's just trying to minimize jitter, but I didn't check or adjust it, since I didn't want to touch anything if it already worked (it's my first time repairing a CD player - only did it because it was for a friend).

A DSO would be very good for displaying this:

For the lower-frequency signals, there were adjustments like this, for the various servo adjustments; using XY mode:

There was also this interesting signal, that appears to want to align the angle of the laser/photodiode assembly, to get it to sit in the CD grating line. I didn't touch that either!

My extent of the repair was replacing all the belts, and swapping out the snapped bits (it must have been forcibly opened in the past), by using a donor non-working CD player from ebay. I also learned it's not a good idea to buy a Pioneer product with '01' in the product name suffix, e.g. model 201, 301 etc.. because they fix the issues in models 202, 302, etc. Some of the plastic parts changed from 01 to 02, but then remained the same for versions 03, 04, etc. This is obvious really, but sometimes easy to forget when purchasing products.

I have a Tek CRT scope permanently mounted under the shelf above my assembly bench (the permanent bit is the main reason it is still there) I use it when I don't want to drag my assembly work over to my test bench. I really like the triggering on the old Tek.