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Still on the fence about buying a scope vs. a logic analyzer for board-level repair
I was talking to a guy at the shop last week who swore he only uses a $200 scope for 90% of his work on laptop motherboards. But then another guy said without a logic analyzer you're basically guessing on I2C and SPI lines. Has anyone else found one tool way more useful than the other for modern stuff?
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singh.jessica1mo ago
The $200 scope guy isn't wrong since that covers power sequencing and basic dead board stuff, but you hit a wall hard when a device is actually communicating but not responding right. A logic analyzer saved my ass on a stubborn SPI flash dump last month when my scope couldn't even trigger on the signal.
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lucas_johnson1mo ago
What brand of logic analyzer did you use for that SPI job? I've been eyeing a Saleae clone but I'm worried about the software locking up or missing samples on faster buses. Did you have to do any signal conditioning or was the raw dump clean enough to decode?
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