We live in a time when having an oscilloscope is only a minor luxury. But for many decades, a good scope was a major expense, and almost no hobbyist had a brand new one unless it was of very poor quality. Scopes were big and heavy and, at the price most people were willing to pay, only had a single channel. Granted, having one channel is better than having nothing. But if the relative benefit of having a single channel scope is 10 points, the benefit of having two channels is easily at least 100 points. So what was a poor hacker to do when a dual-trace or higher scope cost too much? Why, hack, of course. There were many designs that would convert a single trace scope into a poor-quality multichannel scope. Heathkit made several of these over the years like the ID-22, the ID-101, and the ID-4101. They called them “electronic switches.” The S-2 and S-3 were even earlier models, but the idea wasn’t unique to Heathkit and had been around for some time.

There were two common approaches. With alternative or alt mode, you could trigger a sync pulse and draw one trace. Then trigger again and draw the second trace with a fixed voltage offset. If you do this fast enough, it looks like there are two traces on the screen at one time. The other way is to rapidly switch between voltages during the sweep and use the scope’s Z input to blank the trace when it is between signals. This requires a Z input, of course, and a fast switching clock. This is sometimes called “chopper mode” or, simply, chop. This wasn’t just the realm of adapters, though. Even “real” analog scopes that did dual channels used the same methods, although generally with the benefit of being integrated with the scope’s electronics.

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