I can certainly understand Jan's point about a noisy environment, but it seems that sufficient shielding could be achieved without resorting to a separate cabinet. And on its face the idea, as hinted at by Stefan, seems plausible. If the critical/important things can be accomplished on their own, the knobs and dedicated CRT just seem an unnecessary expense. Or at least an albeit incredibly convenient if superfluous expense.

Oh, I'd be the first to say that I would never develop something like this to run under MS Windows. Not because a GUI would be prohibitive, but simply because I wouldn't want to be in a position of having an entire product line declared obsolete just because Bill Gates wants to push a new upgrade onto all of his customers. But if the triggering and storage and such were all handled on-board, I don't see any reason a GUI couldn't handle the operator interfacing.

There is the fact that you would be required to wait for the computer to boot up. But once you do it seems like you'd be in a much better position to not only measure data, but log data as well. Moreover, imagine being able to link all of your test equipment into a single unified instrument. Imagine being able to trigger your DSO on a particular data word as measured on your logic analyzer.

Anyway, I have no experience with these things. If you do, and you say they were trash, I bow to your experience. But I still wonder if there are actually any real reasons that such a system could not be developed (as opposed to just knowing that it was once done poorly). It sure seems to me that if they could, it would be well worth it to do so.

Just a thought.

Joe