12V 60A car battery , maybe dead?

[gotoluc]

Good points MarkE

You can get the 6052BE for $5. less from this seller: http://www.ebay.com/itm/281368543872

Luc

[MarkE]

$5. will buy another cheapy probe.

BTW, there is a big difference between the cheapy probes that come with these scopes, are sold on Ebay for under $10. and a $50. probe from ProbeMaster in San Diego.  The cheapy probes use copper core coax that has a low uniform impedance which is actually bad.  The $50. and up expensive probes from ProbeMaster, Tek, Keysight, LeCroy, etc use a fine nichrome resistance wire core.  Where the cores make a big difference is in the probe response to a fast rising edge.  The cheapy probes ring badly whereas the $50. probes do not.  For a 1m cable, the first 15ns - 50ns of a pulse is highly distorted by the probe.  If your signals do not rise faster than about 30ns (~10MHz sinewave) this is not a problem. 

[gotoluc]

More valid points!

Good things most of the stuff we do here is below 10Mhz

Thanks for sharing these good points

Luc

[Mars67]

Thanks for the great advice guys. I live in South Africa so it is a challenge to buy stuff off e-bay as many suppliers don't ship here and our postal services are so bad that you are very likely to lose any items of perceived value.

As far as the circuit is concerned I reversed L1 and it does not work. I wonder if the layout of my circuit could have anything to do with the heat issues?

[gotoluc]

I stayed in Durban, South Africa for 6 months 2 years ago and ordered some electronics from China through eBay and had no problems.
Try to buy it, the worse that would happen is they would send you your money back. Make sure to use paypal to get payment protection.
So many sellers sell this scope, you should find someone that will ship to South Africa.

Luc