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This is why I always say you should friggen turn it on at least once to make sure everything is working so you can rule out anything you fucked up after taking it apart.

Dave reminds me of myself when I was a child. I would get a new RC car and the first thing I did was take it apart, then spent a week putting it back together so I could actually use it :D

We have come a long way since those green screen oscilloscopes that we used when I was in high school.

New to all of this so I really, really appreciate all the hard work. I will be working my way through lots of videos I am sure. Cheers! Robert

At 31’ 30” from the video, the oscilloscope was set to 4 channels in operation, the Timebase was 5ns/div, and the sample rate was 250MSPS (sample period was 4ns). Under these settings, waveforms were plotted by sin(x)/x interpolation points. The display seemed to show small periodical noise, which was caused by round-off error from the interpolation point calculation. The minor inaccuracy is far less than the specification of DC gain accuracy (approximately 3%). The related problem from the video has been corrected by beta version firmware. Official version firmware will be released in early March. Dave stopped the above-mentioned waveform and zoomed in to observe it. (Vertically zoomed in 100x, horizontally zoomed in 20x) When Zoom in waveforms and the real sample points are not sufficient to reveal the original waveform, GDS-1000B will adopt sin(x)/x interpolation method to plot the original waveforms. In which, the displayed waveform was expanded from one step to more than one hundred steps (4~ 5 div). Oscilloscope’s AD Converter has only 8 bits resolution. Therefore, waveforms observed under this circumstance are meaningless. With the same operational procedures, oscilloscopes from Tek and Keysight showed similar waveforms. This situation is the same as continuing to zoom in an image to see a mosaic image. GW Instek

I can't understand all the whining about the layout and size - I like it - roomy for the fingers, simple and clean and the yellow is rather nostalgic :P Not everything has to be cram packed with the controls so close together that the eyes are always straining to pick one out from the other while the fingers are always hitting an adjacent control. Very nice in my opinion.

I'm loving the reassembly sound effect.

I have no idea what you are anyone in the comments are talking about, but I love this channel. I am going to beige watch until I understand! Used to love tearing stuff apart when I was young. As a journeyman machinist who has worked with many an EE this is awesome stuff!

11:50 the fuse is the red block next to the thermistor it says T 2A 250V

It is incredible to show us what is inside this device.

They are using positive air flow to move the air, the fan is only there to increase the air pressure in the cavity. When you take the shield off it's not being used as a heatsink. I bet the only thing that needs cooling is the power supply, and the slight increased air pressure is enough to do it.

Very nice teardown. Love it!! When I look at the display side with the "wasted space" then it looks like there is space for a multimeter and logic analyzer extension. The 4 round holes and the one rectangular hole are suspicous. That Zync part costs around $90 at Digikey, wow. Would not have expected such an expensive part in such a low price test gear.

This was an interesting teardown. A lot was different on this scope then others. Mostly not for the better but interesting with the seperate prosessor board. I was afraid that we would not get to see / know about the prosessor / FPGA but Dave fixed it for us:)

received my GDS-2102E days ago, an amazing oscilloscope, Amazing large screen, LOT of nice and cool features, super responsive, super fast. I also like the screen saver if the oscilloscope is not in use. Best deal.

Gotta love those tear-downs and repairs where you realize you have some spare parts just when you thought you were done.

Designed very well, IMHO and uniquely. GWInstek has been around for over 40 years and I can't recall in that time, their devices not living up to its spec sheets once released to the market, and built to last. Their main problem had always been functionality vs cost compare to competitors. Before the Rigol and Owons, they battled against Leader, Trio, B&K, Radio Shack, Heathkit etc., and are still around, and many prior competitors, aren't.

I actually like the styling of this scope. For my taste it "looks" nicer than the Rigol on the outside. On the inside is another story.

I really like the separate vert controls. And it uses the entire screen for waveform display. Whereas the Rigol wasted the sidebars by not making them hide able. ..All in All I like it !

The neon is the ARM equivalent to the SSE instructions, and they boost the floating point math speed quite a bit, specially on stuff with vectors and matrixes.

I'm glad I have the Rigol DS1054Z (maxed out, of course), however as you mentioned, it's good to see some competition in this price range as well. I prefer the Rigol because of the matte screen, glossy LCDs are big no for me on test equipment. The only positive thing about the GW are the separate controls for each channel, but even that won't make me sell my Rigol and get a GW instead...

Dave, may be it is more reasonable to play around with it before tear down? I'm a little bit worried that the performance can be affected by re-assembly...

For a cheap scope this is fine! I like the larger layout. I hate occidentally nudging nearby pots when adjusting another. I like the separate pots. I like the colour but that scheme is not the only one available. All in all I think this a brilliant scope for the beginner and enthusiast. My first CRO ever was a cheap charlie GW and it was hammered with use for over 30 years and still going strong until stolen.

cool vid as always dave =)

I have and love this scope. I have yet to figure out how to use all of the trigger modes and features and would benefit from a real world application of same. I found this video (for the second time after some years) while searching for how to use in hopes of learning the features I have not yet figured out (or UN learning my mistaken ideas).

A dual-core Cortex-A9 is no slouch, interesting choice. I bet it costs more than a TI Sitara plus separate FPGA, but as you demonstrated the results speak for themselves. Very responsive. I think they've gone with the separate processor board because it's (going to be) used in other products, they can pump out a higher volume of the processor board to potentially lower their overall costs across their entire line of products. Just plug it in to a different device with different programming.

Would love to see an more in depth practical use review of this scope :) Im curious about that, what i guess could be a interpretive high res feature at ~ 34:35 ? :)

I have a GW INSTEK GDS1202B, two channel 200 MHz version, and I can't seem to get FFT to work. I'm sure I'm not getting the settings right or something stupid like that but their manual is a bit scant. I also have a TEK 2440 and I like the controls a bit better just a lot less bells like FFT to mess with. Great teardown, loved it.

I've seen enough after 15 minutes and I'm getting the Rigol!

Solder looks pretty good, solid - even the re-work/ touchup, PCB looks clean, didn't se any micro solder balls or flux on the PCB's. The pulses or bits on the channels are they some type of gnd loop from "under shielding" or a PCB layout? Would a filter on the channel output clean that up?

+EEVblog - That "processor" runs an ADP5052 for it's local power regulation - a chip specifically designed for running Spartan 6 FPGAs. Spartan 6's also have inbuilt LVDS drivers, so can directly drive an LCD. This should hopefully explain what's going on as between it's inbuilt DDR2/3 memory controller (up to two chips, as shown on this board) and inbuilt LVDS drive, this looks for all the world like it has to be a Spartan 6 on there. Interesting, though, that they got away with using it to power a Zynq..

The two chan is only 300usd,. not bad at all! lots of bang for bucks. Seriously considering buying this one, my old one is a Philips PM3267 so yeah overdue for a upgrade (it's actually older then i am..) Heck, the PM3267 goes for around the same amount @ ebay second hand. Oh well, practically free upgrade! Always welcome

Hi dave I was thinking you can do a video series like power supply design, but design an oscilloscope this time i am pretty sure it would be the most complicated and fun thing in the world. keep the good work up!

I think one of the latest video game console's uses a similar air flow scheme. The reviewer said they did it that way so they could use a higher air flow volume at lower speed.

Those four plastic bosses below the display at 12:00 look suspiciously like 4mm sockets for a DMM option. The square cutout to the left, digital channels maybe?

2ch 70MHz one sounds VERY good to me (I do mostly low frequency analog troubleshooting stuff) so... yes. TY for the info

This is the future of complex electronic devices, FPGA and multiple cores on one chip. It will take a strong, diverse development team to bring products to market but the close integration on the same piece of silicon will make this technology the winner in the long run. The next gen Zynq (UltraScale+ MPSoC) should be out soon. Still kind of a solution in search of a problem !! Xilinx needs a version with less cores on more on chip RAM and Flash.

Any new Rigol comming up or any other crazy value item ? Need to buy a new scope asap.

i think the multiple boards is a way to standardize/lower cost between models

Interesting that the diff pairs for each channel to the ADC don't look like they're length matched. May not matter for 100MHz.

Yo yo, Jamicon is actually well known in the industry and they're pretty good :)

Does it do any i2c or spi bus decoding stuff? Maybe thats what the app stuff will be for.

most important question: can you software upgrade the 50 to the 100 ? anyways that totally different processor board design looks weird, maybe they have some very generic module that the put in everywhere? or even bought from somewhere else? it even has a different colour

Jamicon is a Taiwanese brand cap that is mostly known in the audiophile circle for being the caps loved by Brit firm Musical Fidelity. I've swapped quite a few dried up Jamicons from MF machines before, MF love to run their amp with a lot of bias current, and that really did a number on the Jamicon caps. Not sure if they have managed to keep a better seal now.

It looks like a really nice oscilloscope

Hi Dave, they might be original Nippon-Chemicon Caps, but I know for a fact that Samyoung has used the same logo, even with Samyoung written inside of the logo, so I would not trust them 100% on it beeing actual original Nippon Chemicon caps. (type mentioned here is a Samyoung photo flash cap type CE P 350SV290uF) Jamicon is a fairly standard reasonable quality cap for consumer products here in the Netherlands. I haven't tested them but the products that use them are of reasonable consumer quality. (Amplifiers, function generators (Velleman), Toslink DAC to Cinch etc.) Keep up the great video's, love them!

I do the whole "leaving the heatsink out thing" on a daily basis, what sucks more is then putting it back together for the second time, only to notice you have a spare CMOS battery on your desk lol.

separate processor board allows them to use it across different models and maybe even different equipment...

so dave, which do you recommend as first oscilloscope this one or the rigol DS1054Z (for beginners) ?

Can you give a basic description of what these testing devices do for us nubs that just like watching your channel? I've never used an oscilloscope, and would just like to know how to use them generally. I get they can be used instead of a multimeter for a lot of applications, but where would you use them instead of a multimeter, and what information do they give that you would act on vs a multimeter?

Maybe those processor boards might be shared between various scopes.

was going to get the rigol 1054z but i will have to take a look at this one hope to see a video on you useing it and your impressions compared to rigol. my b&k 15mhz scope circa 1977 finally died :(

Dave, you missed the weird looking 7-pin SO-8 chip (19:00).. Whats up with that one?

was almost set on the Rigol 1054Z but it seems so slow on the screen update. All the people who use the Rigol...u dont mind that?...twist a knob ...half second later it updates the screen...how can u use that? I would love to see a more in depth review on this one!

Thanks a Lot

hi Dave. I'm going to buy an oscilloscope (400-500$ budget) and stopped my selection on: 1. GDS1102B - because of 100mhz 2. Rigol 1054Z (4 ch?) 3. Analog one (still can't decide which one, Hitachi or Tektronix or which else. Can you please advise and help to decide? P.S: I'm in Baku, Azerbaijan and working with power supplies (for example Alpha series by TDK Lambda), AOM drivers by Panasonic, laptop motherboards and other stuff.

There's a low hum in the audio. Could be my end but it's definitely there. Thought you might like to know.

The fan is OK as long as the static pressure is enough to supply continues airflow.

For low price it has bright LED's under the buttons at least so you can see the the state of the buttons under bright light. Could the yellowish front panels be glow in the dark material? That would explain the odd color.

hey dave, or anyone who has an opinion, im looking for an entry level scope. Would you recommend a 50mhz with 4 channels or a 100mhz with 2 channels? If it makes a difference I would be using it for audio as well as microcontroller circuits.

Totally off topic here, but help would be appreciated- Im building a circuit with an LM3914 and the first segment is dimly lit- when I add other segments the first one its still lit in each segment >:( Other than that a circuit works fine. My solution is to put a resistor (4.7k) to positive. It will only add 15mW to the chips dissapation. Will this be okay??? I dont mean to be starting anything on youtube and i know this is a fourm queston I just wanted (perhaps) a fast responce- and what other than youtube!

The op amp on CH2 do an inversion perhaps?

You spent some time discussing capacitor brands, can you throw some light on how to identify good brands for passive components? E.g. Design calls for 10pf cap. Digikey lists a dozen+brands... How to figure out which are quality?

The Rigol has one big advantage over the Instek. All of the software that makes the MUCH more expensive Rigol's in that series much more expensive are already present in that Rigol. They're just software locked. There still exists several websites where the more expensive license key can be generated turning that Rigol into a $1000.oo machine. If you thought ahead and bought a plus version you can also get the 16 Digital channels once they're unlocked if you buy the digital probe cable.

I like the look of the GW Instek to be honest... that 'wasted space' means it's easy to grab the button /knob you need. Depends how pressed for space you are I guess.

11:55 you say there is no fuse protection in it? What is the red plastic thing? "T2A"... seems to be a fuse.

That fan only moves the still air to keep the air temperature ambient. "To keep it from heat soaking".

36:10 The artefacts are exactly in position of samples (dots) may be it's intentional.

if you take your pass/fail and put in a noise source wouldn't that give you your waveform updates per second from the pass/fail output?

Which to choose for a low end scope ? The next assessment video might make the decision a bit easier.

I wouldn't be surprised if that periodic display anomaly turned out to be related to the almost total lack of screening inside the thing. No metal can around the PSU? What were they thinking?

Separate processor board so the large main board can be lower tech (2 layer?)

38:00 Looks like you can use USB or the internet or something to install those apps. Why else would it ask for a Remote Disk?

At last a decent scope that I can afford. I will treat myself after Christmas so thanks for the Teardown Dave.

I really love ya teardowns Dave, and I guess it's your field of expertise, but watching oscilloscopes, signal generators, etc getting torn down just gets kinda samey.

This is almost double in price compared to the Rigol. How is it cheaper?

Hi Dave, Are you sure that the fan doesn't move the air from the inside out, because that would make more sense. It would draw the air from the side vent over the power supply and out the back. Thanks for sharing...

Nippon Chemicon caps in the PSU... but secured with that horrible glue that goes conductive after heat/time. I'm surprised they still even make the stuff!

Product review please! :) Also I'm not sure where you get these prices from. This is the price for the 50Mhz model. GDS-1104B goes for about $740 in the US. GDS-1054B cost €880 at element 14. Could you point a seller that holds better prices?

I think GW Instek is hedging their bets. The same core module, especially this single Zynq design, can be used in a very wide variety of things so they can run those in bigger volume. Also since the Zynq have both ARM and FPGA at on place they can effectively attach the ADC directly to the AMBA of the ARM core, allowing better throughput than going through some standard interface.

Is this the teardown the size of the bench you were talking about? ;P kidding ... another great teardown! ... im not very happy with the construction and will be sticking with the rigol!

What's a "different desing group" Dave :P :P :P

man i was so keen on this & even looking forward to modding the fan but that noise artifact kinda makes me a bit eeeh :/

what are they for anyway?

Dave: Jump to conclusion then correct himself. Rinse, repeat.

Different boards to avoid digital noise into the analog?!

Dave, about the controls layout: I like it as it is, better than the Rigol, because of Ergonomics; I've got thick vingers!

Good video, Dave It's a fairly clean design, as I have been advocating, you can do super simple layouts these days. And I would argue you could reduce that much further still. All that metal enclosure thinking is quite irrational. They are not building a tank. Of course you can get rid of all the buttons as well and the accompanying boards and just make it the obvious tablet form factor and get rid of all the irrational legacy thinking. I would also like to see isolated channels. ADCs are so cheap now and shared ground is really unprofessional. You could do 1GS/s on the first channel and less on the rest. The power supply is also very old school thinking. That should be a tiny resonant converter on the board and no trafo or lyt caps. Resonant high frequency is so beautiful.

Just imagine scopes as thin as TVs are nowadays! New xyz scope, whisbang specs, thin as air!!!!

I pine for a scope this size. Mine at work is a big analog, CRT HP scope.

so Dave, "warranty void if NOT removed"? :D hahahah manufacturers would go berserk with that label

I'm willing to bet an Esinomed tablet that this is a prototype unit. Production units probably won't have the glitchy display,, they will have the screws in the right place, fan will be pointed the other way and the Nippon caps replaced with Reliable CapXon.

Those NCC caps in the PSU are bit funny color to be genuine NCC. I've seen lots of fake NCC caps in the past and those have the same crusty look on them. Can't be sure though...

Jamicon are half-assed good. Very similar to lelon

Yes there is a fuse in the power supply.

GW-Instek is much higher in quality compared to the RIGOL, I saw many videos where it shows weakness in measurements for the RIGOL. I am using the GW-Instek since years, Just ordered a new one, arriving in a week. I also have no problem regarding the PSU quality, as long as it works perfectly. so its pointless to talk about the size, or the fan.

Seems that the apps are downlaodable from their website. They have an DVM "app.", filteringing "app."and a logger "app.". Seems to be an interesting starting-point of some hacking ;-)

screaming like a metal head Rigol forever! \m/ :P

Why not show the thing working first?

Hi dave i have , im not a professional in electronics, but i found that most "affordable" oscilloscopes ranges between "50 and 200Mhz", though i found on the internet that most usefull radio frequencies ranges from "300 Mhz to 3 Ghz" (Television broadcasts, LAN, bluetooth, GPS, amateur radios, Mobile phones), or even from "3 to 30 Ghz" like (satellite television broadcasting, LAN, amateur radio), and oscilloscope that has a frequency up to these ranges costs a fortune, does this means that "ordinary people" can't analyze these frequencies or am i missing something.

7:28 i wish there were more warranty void if NOT removed stickers 😄