BSG and scopes!

In case you were wondering if I need a real hobby (or a life)...

In BSG (battlestar galactica) in the back of the raptors there is an electronic device. Whenever I've seen it I've always thought that they just took an oscilloscope and put it on the table (if you look at the picture in the wikipedia article you'll think I'm crazy, but the picture is of a really old scope - nice modern ones look just like the one in BSG). It's always struck me as kind of silly and cheap, but I was just reading about BSG from the '70s and apparently they used tektronix equipment as their "futuristic" equipment (tektronix is the main manufacturer of oscilloscopes - and if you look at their page you'll see a modern looking scope). So I guess it's probably a reference to the old show rather than just a cheap way of getting futuristic looking equipment (it ruins the whole future feel for me every time I see it since I see those at work every day).

Yeah, I realize this is probably up there with write only memory as a post no one else will care about - thanks for putting up with it.