My Rigol DS1052E is pretty sweet at 100mhz. Digital capture is really nice.

Definitely go for scope first, Logic Analyzer second. You can get LAs built into scope for a hefty markup, or get one of the USB ones. This typically allows you to do much more than just basic LA work, as they can do full signal and protocol decodes, and display communication in more human readable formats.

I would recommend a PICkit 2 for general programming, although I currently utilize a junebug from blueroomelectronics.

Let’s do a quick comparison: The Nano has 1 MSPS sampling and 1 MHz bandwidth. The Rigol has 1 GSPS sampling and 50/100 MHz bandwidth. The Rigol has 4x as much memory, 5x sensitivity. The Rigol has FFT and other math operators, the Nano doesn’t. The Rigol handles up to 300 V on a channel without dying, the Nano 80 V. This is handy in case something goes wrong and you suddenly end up probing the mains current. When that happens, you want to generate as little of the magic blue smoke as possible.

You get a lot more scope for the money – and a scope built by a test equipment maker, not a random electronics project maker.

Logic analyzers: Handy pieces of equipment, but I’d wait until I saw the need for one before buying it. They’re one of the few pieces of test gear that works better hooked up to a PC than standalone, in any event.

http://oreskovic.me/wp/?p=27

http://www.eevblog.com/2010/03/31/eevblog-70-turn-your-rigol-ds1052e-oscilloscope-into-a-100mhz-ds1102e/

A lot more info on the internals and modifications to extend the functionality of this scope are available here:

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=30.0

So what are some nice logic analyzer tools for the hobbyist?

The Saleae USB Logic analyzer is a good unit at $150 http://www.saleae.com

The USBee SX is $170 and has a comparable set of features and my be a little bit nicer depending on your motives http://www.usbee.com/. Out of the box it decodes a couple more protocols and can also act as a signal generator which arguably justify the price difference. Note though that the Saleae unit basically forced USBee to bring their entry level hardware and software into this price range, so their other stuff may be overpriced, but at the very least they have options for ‘moving up’ which Saleae does not.

For scopes, there are a couple of really attractive tinkerer-grade tools:
The DSO nano is a little handheld 2 channel 1MHz scope built out of portable mp3 player type hardware – really a great deal for $100. http://www.seedstuido.com/

Another nice little scope is the Rigol DS1052E. It’s a 2 channel 50MHz scope which is already priced fairly at around $350, but considering there is a very simple serial command that changes it to a 100MHz scope, it’s pretty well a bargain-basement piece of gear.

A final helpful tool to throw in the bag would be the Bus Pirate. This thing has quite a learning curve but for $30 really can’t be beat for what it does.

If you’re doing audio, and you make some appropriate protection circuitry, in a pinch you can record it using your pc sound card, and then open the recorded file in an audio editor and zoom in really close.

Regarding the Olimex programmers that Sparkfun sells, just say no. They are more expensive than the PICkit 2/3 and don’t work well. See this link: http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22117

Regarding PICkit 2 use, there are a number of articles and tutorials at http://www.digital-diy.com

If you’re seriously developing and debugging PIC code you’ll want to get something like the ICD2 or ICD3 (the latter is somewhat faster, perhaps important if you’re downloading Linux to a 32 bit PIC). These allow you to do “in circuit debugging” with Microchip’s MPLAB environment.

For lighter use – downloading existing software, etc. the PicKit II is excellent – cheap, simple, and open source. It even has modes for doing serial I/O and acting as a simple logic analyzer. It also has the ability to program chips at the touch of a button, very handy if you’ve got a batch of chips to program.

RE: Oscilloscopes: Another option to consider is “USB” scopes. This is essentially a little box you plug in to your PC, letting you use your PC’s screen to view the waveforms and set the scope controls. These are somewhat less expensive and use up less space on your bench (assuming you’ve already got a computer there). I’ve been using a BitScope, it works reasonably well up to a 1MHz or so, and has a handy logic analyzer as well. There are several others to choose from.

PICkit2/3 – there’s a great discussion about them here: http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20233 – personally, I’d probably buy a PICkit 3. I currently use an ICD2 clone which turned out to be a somewhat bad choice, as it’s vaguely annoying in some ways, and too expensive. Plus I never use the debug function.

Also, much of the perceived “problems” with the PICkit3 stem from the EEVBlog review of it, which (as usual) largely thumps a few issues that are rather minor. (Slower programming on a few rare chips… oh, and the LEDs are dim. Whoop.)

Oscilloscopes: What is your budget? I use a GW Instek GDS-2104 (4ch, 100 MHz, $1500), which is pretty handy for debugging serial comms and the like, and I’ve yet to run into any situation where it’s inadequate. I started out with a 1-channel analogue scope, and decided that it was just more frustration than it was worth.

So if you have a few bucks to cough up, I’d recommend a passable DSO – the fairly popular Rigol DS1052E is $400. If your budget is “as cheap as possible”, I’d shop around eBay for a cheap used scope – just make sure it has two working channels.

In closing – do NOT buy the various “PC oscilloscopes” that flood the market. They’re _shit_, and unless your usage scenarios fall into a few narrow areas (where you might as well buy a DAQ card), will not do what you want.