Dad’s still in heavy “clean out the garage” mode and stumbled upon more tech goodies for me! This time, it’s a Tektronix TDS 1012 oscilloscope!!!!

The TDS 1012 isn’t new. It’s from ~2005... so it’s not exactly vintage either. I’d love one of those new-fangled color scopes, but for my simple needs, this is more than adequate.

It measures up to 100 MHz, so it’s perfect for 16 MHz AVRs.





That back panel is removable. You can buy an expansion pack that clips into the port. It gives you the ability to save to a Compact Flash card as well as print to a parallel printer. I think this scope was originally in the $1000 range. I’ve seen used units on eBay for $450. Based on those prices, it’s not exactly a cheap, entry-level scope.



I’ve been wanting a new scope for years! My old scope is a piece of junk. It’s a BK 1476A and it’s a dinosaur. It’s just that I couldn’t bring myself to drop $400+ on a new scope. You really can’t buy a good scope for under $400. Those dinky little pocket scopes you see for $99 are garbage.



Yeah! It passed all the startup tests.



As I said earlier, a color scope would have been awesome, but beggars can’t be choosers. This thing is awesome!



I plugged in my probe and connected it to the built-in 1 KHz output.



It’s bang-on the money. I love the fact that you can just press “Auto Set” and everything is displayed on-screen.



I hope this scope will come in handy for figuring out why my 7490 clock do-over still runs fast!!!