Over at The Signal Path Blog Shahriar Shahramian has a look at a Fluke 196B Handheld ScopeMeter that he purchased from an eBay seller. The meter was purchased for a few hundred dollars and was listed with a fault that is doesn’t power up. It didn’t come with probes, a back cover or the battery. Shahriar was ready for a full tear down and hopefully a repair but as it turns out the meter worked just fine! Not sure how cheap these surplus dealers get some of these test gear lots but I am guessing it is pennies on the dollar of operational value and they just sell them as non working because they can’t be bothered (or don’t have the capability) of performing any functional testing. Good thing is we get to see a full tear down of the meter along the way. At 32:40 you can see an interesting method of chip cooling and shielding that fluke has used in this unit. This thing is built very well as you would imagine for the price point and the fact that it is a Fluke.