Agilent 9000H series scopes. Good or bad?

[Berni]

I might be able to get one of these scopes for a decent price. The specs certainly look impressive with 5GS/s 12bit going in to 100 Mpts of memory,really low noise front end, nice high resolution screen, fancy trigger and measurement features etc... it just keeps going.

But then i noticed in its datasheet this spec:

Waveform update rate 
Segmented mode:
    Maximum up to 250,000 waveforms/sec
(10 GS/s, 50 ns/div, sin(x)/x: on)  Real time mode 
    Maximum of 3,000 waveforms/sec.
    Typical of 1,100 waveforms/sec with 1kpts memory.
    Typical of 200 waveforms/sec with 100 kpts memory
    Typical of 35 waveforms/sec with 1 Mpts memory
    Typical of 5 waveforms/sec with 10 Mpts 

35 waveforms per second with 1M of memory? What is this? An oldschool Rigol ?
However the segmented mode is pretty much in the ballpark of modern scopes, but i was not able to find when is this mode being used. I have a lot of experience with Agilent 6000 series scopes and they do this thing where turning on most automated enmeshment features would drop the waveform updates down to a similar speed. Is this what these numbers are saying or am i forced to using the segmented memory feature to make use of the waveform update rate (I never actually used the segmented memory features on scopes since having lots of memory sort of works around that)

Has anyone had any experience using these Agilent 9000 series scopes? Also since its PC based is the UI still as responsive as on the other non PC scopes (One of the reasons i love them so much)

[Wuerstchenhund]

Has anyone had any experience using these Agilent 9000 series scopes?

Yes, I've used them occasionally. They're not bad scopes per se, but come with some drawbacks.

First, they're not true 12bit scopes, they are 8bit scopes using oversampling to get 12bit resolution, a trick that many 8bit scopes could do for ages. Since it's oversampling, that means you only get 12bit resolution to 500MHz, and 11bit up to 1GHz.

Although I never cared much for waveform rates, it is pretty low on the DSO9000H Series. 250k waveforms in segmented mode were great 15 years ago, but these days a scope in this class should offer north of 500k waveforms/s (lots of them offer 1M, some more).

The UI is the typically awful mouse-centric Agilent UI (they just can't do a proper touch UI) but it's not overly laggy. Naturally boot times are a bit longer than with embedded scopes but that shouldn't really be an issue.

I'd say at the end of the day if it's a good choice depends on what you want to do with it, and what you would have to pay for it.

[Berni]

Well yes other agilent scopes do have high resolution mode but i always hated how it worked since it changes "bandwith" as you change the horizontal scale. A lot of the time i don't need the above 500MHz bandwidth anyway so not a big deal.

As for the 250k waveform updates thats plenty for me (Not that much difference to a more modern 1M waveform updates). What i want to know is if you can get those 250k on a nice regular brightness gradated display. Getting some 1k-ish updates in regular run mode would make it a pretty horrid scope if you ask me. (Good brightness gradation is a top priority feature)

Im basically thinking of replacing my old MSO6034A since i might be able to score this 9000 for almost the same price but is better than it in almost every way.

[Wuerstchenhund]

As for the 250k waveform updates thats plenty for me (Not that much difference to a more modern 1M waveform updates). What i want to know is if you can get those 250k on a nice regular brightness gradated display. Getting some 1k-ish updates in regular run mode would make it a pretty horrid scope if you ask me. (Good brightness gradation is a top priority feature)

As I said, I never cared much for super high waveform rates (and I only used a DSO9kH for some quick basic measurements, as my main scope is usually a DSO90k), so I didn't pay much attention to it, but from what I remember I'd say that in the region of 3k wfms/s sounds about right.

Agilent's high waveform rate in some of their scopes comes from their MegaZoom ASIC in their non-Windows scopes. However, they seem to have problems getting a similar performance in their Windows scopes (not that it's impossible, though, just Agilent seems to struggle with it).

Also, don't forget that the DSO9kH was pushed out mainly as a competitor to the (at that time new) true 12bit scopes from another manufacturer, and hence had some constraints over the normal DSO9k Series, which is now a somewhat dated. The DSO9kH also had a very short product life (it's already obsolete).

Im basically thinking of replacing my old MSO6034A since i might be able to score this 9000 for almost the same price but is better than it in almost every way.

Well, if the price is right then go for it. If you're locked on Agilent and want a 12bit scope then there's not much choice anyways, unless you can splash out for the DSO-S.

[Berni]

Yeah i noticed that they are discontinued, but thats not a huge deal. What made it most attractive is the 1GHz bandwidth.

So far my MSO6000 works really well as an every day scope, but a larger screen and more bandwidth would have been welcome. 12bit is not a requirement but certainly doesn't hurt.

It is a bit hard to decide if its worth swapping scopes without having hands on experience with it. Almost all information about 9000 series scopes on the web is official marketing material instead of the experience from some regular old joe who used it for a while. In a perfect world i just keep my old scope but it turns out these old 6000 series scopes are still worth quite a bit on ebay (And i got mine for a good bargin begin with)

Overall are any of the Agilent PC based scopes usable as a every day scope? I get the feeling that this is more the sort of scope you drag out when you have some fancy pants measurement to do rather then for poking around a board when it refuses to work.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Overall are any of the Agilent PC based scopes usable as a every day scope?

I'd say, yes, they are. Agilent makes good scopes, and their Windows scopes are no exception.

What I dislike with Agilent however is their GUI, which is based on the old mouse-driven UI from the old first generation Infiniium 54800 Series of Windows scopes. They added touch to it but it's not really optimized for touch, and clearly feels like a standard mouse UI. I very much prefer the MAUI interface LeCroy has put on their scopes, which has been designed for touch from the start. It's still by far the best scope UI I have seen on any Windows scope.

The other thing is that Agilent seems to have difficulties getting good performance out of their Windows architecture scopes, which shows amongst others in the pretty low waveform rate. Their non-Windows scopes since the old 54600 Series are almost all pretty fast (albeit very limited in functionality), but the Windows scopes seem to have difficulty catching up to LeCroy's X-Stream scopes (which are Windows scopes), which in general seem to perform much better under comparable situations.

As I said before, the DSO9kH isn't a bad scope, but because it was essentially a "me, too" product from Agilent when LeCroy came out with their true 12bit scopes (HDO Series, WaveRunner HD) it lacks optimization in several areas.

If you want Agilent and don't need 12bit then maybe the normal DSO9k might be an alternative if it fits your budget. It's waveform rate is still pretty low, but still faster as for the DSO9kH. I'd also recommend to stay away from the older Infiniiums with the smaller 8.4" screen (i.e. 54800, 8000 and 80000 Series) as their waveform rate is abysmally low.

[Berni]

These H models are presumably cheep because of being discontinued while the UI probably wouldn't bother me as much since i been using a Windows Mobile phone for quite a while (Not this new windows phone 8 stuff) that also had a not very touchscreen friendly UI, with some practice using your finger nail on it it ends up working pretty well.

By the way do you have any experience with serial decode on these PC based scopes.I used it quite a bit on the MSO6000, but when sorting trough large amounts of data i still resorted to PC based logic analyzers whenever possible(Low speed only).

[Wuerstchenhund]

By the way do you have any experience with serial decode on these PC based scopes.I used it quite a bit on the MSO6000, but when sorting trough large amounts of data i still resorted to PC based logic analyzers whenever possible(Low speed only).

Not too much on the DSO9k, but what I remember from the MSO7k Series the DSO9k should be superior in terms of serial decode, both in functionality and in performance.

[Berni]

Ah nice since the serial decode on the 6000 seams fairly spartan (I think its identical on the 7000), but usually gets the job done.

Thanks for all the tips