Model 100 Basketcase

Life got in the way, and all projects languished. There isn't much holding me back, except finding a few hours to clean off the desk in the shack and start probing again.

I actually have a somewhat working scope, though I really should have purchased the unit with a scope adapter because sourcing that locally is a pain, and using the cheap leads is even more painful.

Maybe I'll have a more interesting update this month.

Life got in the way, and I've done little more than verify my 'scope actually works. And now I have to clean up my shack before I can restart this work.

In the meantime, perhaps others here would be interested in promoting a Retrocomputing StackExchange site? Such a site is being proposed right now, and it could use some love.

Well, I finally ordered a BitScope Micro from a local reseller. Unfortunately, the reseller did not offer the probe kit(s), so it looks like I'm going to have to find that part elsewhere. I can get probes from Amazon pretty easily, but the probe adapters from Bitscope will have to be sourced somewhere else.

However, this is a major step in the right direction. The direction where I find out if the LCD display board is totally toast, in which case this work gets a lot harder.

But I'm glad I finally got this piece of kit. It adds a lot of basic functionality to my shack in a small package. Maybe I'll post pics of the signals I capture, assuming I can figure out how to make all this stuff work.

The irony is not lost on me that the device I just bought is orders of magnitude more powerful than the dinosaur I'm trying to resurrect.

Wow, two Skulls and a like and a mention on the @Hackaday Twitter! This is the most internet famous I've ever been.

I should probably follow through on this rather modest project...

So, I'm shopping for an oscilloscope, and my budget and needs will probably be more than satisfied by something like a BitScope. I'm not sure what probes I'd need, though. I think I can get away with the 60 MHz 10:1 probes? If the 60 MHz refers to sampling rate and 10:1 refers to signal voltage amplification...? Given this project is somewhere around 8MHz at TTL levels.

In an effort to leverage the community, consider this a request for any comments or advice regarding this or any other 'scope choices. My budget is tight, and while I have some access to local second-hand gear, I might not have the skill to know if the gear was any good.

It's like my DMM: I'd love to be able to afford (or justify) a Fluke like my engineer friends. But I can't really, so I got a decent mid-priced college special. Is there such a thing in the oscilloscope market?

I found a scan of the M100 service manual, and printed up a big copy of the schematics. I worked my way through the service manual flowchart right up to the point where I need to 'scope the signals going into the display.

Now I need a 'scope.