Electronics has always been a big hobby to me, and although I do not build a lot these days I do like repairing and restoring a lot of gear these days, I seem to have found something that I am good at which is working and repairing RF Linear Amplifiers, It is OKay to work on these items but you end up collecting them.
I have always liked my Rigol Scope, well up until now that is, of late it has shown a rather annoying problem.
The problem shows itself in two ways, but both when switching the unit on.
State One
When switching the Oscilloscope on you get the Rigol Logo which stays on screen but the only LED that lights up is the ‘Intensity’ button and the scope will not go any further than this however long it is left. At this point no other lights appear and the only thing that can be done is to switch off thew scope and try again.
State Two
In this state the scope will get a little further, lights seem to appear in the correct order of things but it will end with the all of the channel lights lit but the main show of there being a problem is that the ‘Start/Stop’ Button is lit up in ‘Red’, and once this has shown its head it will not go any further.
I would not really mind at this point as when I was working, losing a few hundred quid was not a problem, but now that I am on disability and basically earning diddly quat it’s a bit of a spin, the other problem is that I expanded this basic scope to a much better model through firmware updated, so it not just the case of replacing a scope with another basic scope, to go through the same process of expanding another scope to the same level or do I just get a better version this time round, although this might take some time.
There is a point where switching the scope on and off again and back on again, and again will eventually make the scope appear and it will switch onto it’s normal working state, this means that I then have to leave it switched on all day which I am not totally happy with doing., but I suppose that it is at least working and I am able to plug in and play so to speak.
I think it will be the last time that I choose to have every option installed, it was just at the time a lot cheaper to do this than order a scope that has most of the options that I required at the time, and now that this has happened it seems to be a total waste of time and money, which I would not be too miffed about except that this arrive just prior to Cancer and has only been used for about 20 hours in total.
So I am now looking for a cheap scope again but I am not sure if I will stick with Rigol again, it looks like you can get a better deal these days with Siglent, that said it is still a hefty outlay for someone on disability that has to give most of his disability toi his carer to cover the complete lack of money that they get from the local government.