Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Oscilloscope probe compabitibility


I bought a very old Philips oscilloscope some time ago (see my post. This is a Philips PM 3253). Although this Philips really has a lot of features, I cannot really use it well, since I cannot do good readings below 1 MHz because of the bad screen (focus problems, lines stay very long on the screen, or the signals are 'clipped').


Now I saw another one at a local 2nd hand site: Metrix OX8050


I was wondering if the probes between these two scopes (or actually in general in case this one is already sold) are interchangeable.



Answer



Basic probes generally are interchangeable


Basic probes means probes with BNC connectors. Specialist probes, with extra pins and built-in amplifiers (such as differential probes or current probes) are generally not compatible with other brands of scope.


One thing to watch for is the input capacitance of the scope. Capacitance can vary between typically 10 and 15pF. Decent quality probes are adjustable, but not all of them can adjust far enough for all scopes. If you don't get them adjusted right, high frequencies will be distorted, and square waves may be slightly rounded or may ring.


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