So, my ‘scope arrived, rather the worse for its cross country journey. It’d been wrapped into a layer of bubble wrap, placed into a box – several inches wider than it in every direction (except vertically) – with a garbage bag…and then shipped. The fragile 40 year old plastic that covered several of the controls shattered into teeny tiny bits, and several control shafts were bent.
I rather grumpily sent a ‘I want my money back’ request via ebay which was met with a surprising response – it was refunded by the end of the next day.
Not only that, they didn’t want it back.
So I spent some of this evening scrubbing the filth ridden case, realising that it’s missing some bits (I’d not noticed, it’s got no handle, nor any feet), pulling out the broken shards of plastic and checking it over.
It didn’t really start very optimistically. The plug on the end of the cable has had its earth pin rather…rudely cut off. Which led me to wonder if this was because it’d tripped ground-leakage due to some internal fault, or because the previous owner didn’t enjoy safety.
Handily, though, the 3-pin US plug I originally bought for some other job was lying around so it was “but a moment’s work”* and it sported a new plug.
Whilst I had it in at least several bits I took a moment to check the fan, which it turned out was fouling its shroud and pretty much stuck. Looking at the state of it, I think it’s probably been doing that for a very, very long time. I wasn’t wholly convinced it would actually turn, and if it did turn, I suspected it would now make an unpleasant noise. A bit of careful trimming of one blade of the fan seems to have it solved though.
And then I continued my ‘having a good look around’. I broke out the anglepoise and the torch, peered hither and thither, and finally concluded I could see nothing terrifying (other than the sheer volume of components crammed into the case)
…so on it went.
And after an appropriate warming up period, the beam scanned across the front. Indeed, there are two lines, because it’s got two channels.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any cables to test (or calibrate) it with…
* I’m sorry America, your plugs suck compared to UK ones. They’re just dismally nasty. And I *know* it’s because they only have to deal with half the power, but still.
