This is the old style open source community that I love something and that is often shadowed by big commercial open core projects pretending that they need to change their license because others are using they work...

Like in the good old time, such projects are often made by Linux users just desperate to have a good solution to their problems and happy to share it with others.

The original (or fake, who knows) from Agilent cost that much, yes, but there is AR488 [1], which can be had for pocket money. I have limited experience myself with it (I got the Agilent one), but it seemed to work just fine.

The Agilent one is a bit tricky as its firmware is uploaded when it powers up (is connected to USB) and changes then its ID. That however is well documented and with recent versions of linux-gpib should just work (it does for me).

Then there are GPIB host adaptors for ISA, PCI and PCIe busses. The latter might be expensive and working PC MB with ISA hard to find, but those with PCI are readily available on the secondary market for reasonable prices. I made good experience with one from CEC.

[1] https://github.com/Twilight-Logic/AR488

It can handle a full 68000 bus no problem, but it’s cumbersome and unwieldy. (The X11 interface mentioned in the article is nifty though, I remember having the same issue with fonts.)

I love my Saleae and even the cheap USB logic analyzers work fine with Sigrok. But everything is either 8 or 16 channels.

I realize it’s a niche-of-a-niche use case, but is anyone making USB logic analyzers with 64+ channels at a hobbyist price point (or DIY)?