no, I do not want to screw my scope. I love my scope, but since I am total newbie I am always afraid that I'll do something wrong and ruin the expensive thing.
Would a high voltage spike ruin the scope?
What are other possible ways of damaging it?
What are other possible ways of damaging it?
Not carefully reading the manual?
BTW - you haven't even told us what kind of scope you have, and this is kinda a cross post of sorts - didn't you ever learn your lesson from last time (why am I even asking this?)...
Aaawww....
I reckon throwing a brick at it would ruin it
Don't know otherwise :
What are other possible ways of damaging it
Sitting on it does it for me.
Magnets near the shadow mask of a colour CRT.
Would a high voltage spike ruin the scope?
What are other possible ways of damaging it?
Yes, a "high voltage" spike could damage the input amplifiers and other things in the scope.
Honestly, the best thing you can do is to carefully read your manual, then re-read it. Then, keep it handy as you use the scope. You can also find a number of tutorials on the internet on how to properly use an oscilloscope. If you scope has a Z-input, it usually takes much less voltage than the main X/Y inputs - so be careful of that, too.
For working with high voltages (or voltages above what the scope can handle), you can purchase special attenuation probes; these, coupled with any attenuation protection/switches on your scope, can help keep the scope safe (just remember to do the math in your head about signal levels on-screen, unless the scope is a DSO that can compensate for this).
One other thing - if working with line-level voltages, use of an isolation transformer is a near must, to prevent a ground loop path between the device you are testing and the scope itself.
Finally - realize that a scope is a signal-level diagnostic tool; for the most part, unless you really, really know what you are doing (and I admit that I am very rusty on using a scope - you can probably tell by my comments), using a scope for measurements on anything over a certain voltage level (ie - whatever is the maximum for your scope inputs) is not reccommended.
For most hobbyist purposes, though, you're not going to be doing this (one area I can imagine, though, is checking isolation between a coil driver circuit - say an h-bridge - and the microcontroller outputs - a dead diode could allow back-EMF pulses into the scope, which, if unanticipated, could cause problems).
ITS not a cross post, I just want to be sure.
Also try to keep the probe clean. Stuff used for soldering can affect the insulation/contact of the probe and this is especially true if your probe has a 100MHz+ bandwidth... after all, it's a piece of precision instrument.