A powerful, low cost, gas turbine data acquisition system capable of handling 24 or more channels of high and low level data is now in use at the University of Tulsa. The assembled system hardware, less transducers, is priced at about six thousand dollars and shows potential for further significant cost reduction. Easily programmed in the BASIC language, the microcomputer commands an analog-multiplexing digital voltmeter, decodes the resulting serial data, and performs conversion to engineering units. It also processes data for display on a color television monitor, for storage on diskette, and for transcription on a printer. Examples, showing gas turbine performance, clearly portray the power of the general purpose microcomputer in an engineering data acquisition system and its potential for engineering education.