Electronics > Beginners

DSO Record Length

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Apochrom:
Hello,

I am a beginner in electronics, but I have a background in physics and basic knowledge in electricity. For many years I have had some electrical measuring instruments, e.g. multimeters and also a 40 year old Oszilloscope. (to be honest I have a lot of multimeters, which Dave Jones is not completely innocent of... ;) ) But now I have decided to do more in the field of electronics and since half a year I'm doing more information. The first Arduino projects I have already worked on.  Here in the eevblog I can read so much that I am busy for years...
Now I bought a DSO (Siglent sds1202x-e) three weeks ago. It's a lot of fun to try everything I can with it and I constantly get new ideas here in the forum and on the linked Youtube tutorials.
Now I was visiting a friend of mine who is a professional electronics engineer. At work he probably works exclusively with Tektronix Oscilloscopes. For his small private laboratory he also bought a Tektronix, namely a Tektronix TBS1154.
Now finally to the actual question.
I could have a look at this device and my friend showed me some details of it. As a beginner I wasn't able to recognize the differences between Tektronix and my beginner device so fast, but of course it's clear to me that Tektronix belongs to the professional league and is therefore much more expensive than my Chinese beginner device. He paid 1800€ for it. I do not want to compare the two DSO's at all and price comparisons always limp. But what I didn't understand at all is that the device has a record length of 2,5kpt.  When I asked him, that this seems to me in the comparison with other current DSO's extremely little, he said that one cannot compare this. Tektronix have a completely different technical approach and therefore the 2,5kpt are more than sufficient. But he didn't say more about that.
But googling hasn't helped me figure out what this other approach at Tektronix is in terms of record lenght. Therefore my question here, what do the 2.5kpt of the Tektronix TBS11154 mean and what is the difference to the 14Mpt of my DSO?

Thanks, Jürgen

DDunfield:
I don't think Tek is doing anything special.

DSO's from not all that long ago has much lower buffer depth.

My Tek2032 has 4k, TDS210 has 2.5k , TDS380 has 1K.

Traditional storage capacity was limited by the memory having to reside in the acquisition module and it was expensive. Things have improved and modern DSO's often have very deep memory. My DS1054Z has 24M (equivalent to 12M compared to above as they are two separate channels).

Dave

Doctorandus_P:
Siglent makes pretty good scopes nowadays.
I had a short look at the TBS1154, and it does not only have a very short buffer depth, but also a pretty small screen. These are both indications of an old desgign, while the Siglents are based around newly developed hardware.
The capabilities of scopes has made tremendous leaps tni the last 10 to 15 years.

I did not look very deep into it but If I were to choose I would almost certainly choose the Siglent over the Tek, even if the price difference was no issure.
The new Siglent scopes are not "Simple Cheap Chinese Scopes". They are excellent pieces of modern equipment and your scope wil probably give you many years of excellent performance.

I can understand your friend wanting to have a Tek for at home if he also works with them. Switching between user interfaces is a bit annoying for some people, especially for the more osbsure capabilities of the scope.

It may be fun if you invite your friend for some measurements brainstorming and compare the scopes. This is probably also educational for you to see some different measurements and get a better idea of how to use an scope and how to use it.

I have a "lowly" Rigol DS1052-E and I was thingking about upgrading to a 4-channel Siglent, but for most of my measurements the old Rigol is already more Oscilloscope than I need.
The built in logic analyser of the Siglent is a nice bonus, but for a logic analyser I still prefer an USD10 FX2 device combined with Sigrok & Pulseview. A big PC monitor with mouse is an excellent interface for a Logic Analyser (Not so for a scope, for a scope I prefer all the buttons on the front panel).

rf-loop:
If look only this question about one single acquisition capture length.

2.5k sample and 14M sample difference is huge.

(of course there is also other differences - lot of)

One advantage is in this TBS1000 series. It have this maximum 1GSa/s for all channels simultaneously.
SDS1004X-E can 1GS/s only for two channels simultaneously and 500MS/s for all four channels. And 2 channel models only for one channel and half speed for two channel.

One other basic things big difference is that this Tek have analog trigger circuit when Siglent use full digital side trigger system what offer lot of more advanced triggering with also better trigger accuracy.  But it need remember TBS is quite old design. So it can bit more understand. Today it is really "outdated" and in most of things example this tiny cheap Siglent  outperform it hands down nearly in everything. But not start this debate at all.

Here image what may tell part of story about short vs bit longer memory.

As can see with long memory we can use lot of higher samplerate when go to slower timebases.
Example with 1ms/div still full samplerate 1GS/s when  TBS1000 have only 250kS/s   4000 times less.


--- Quote ---When I asked him, that this seems to me in the comparison with other current DSO's extremely little, he said that one cannot compare this. Tektronix have a completely different technical approach and therefore the 2,5kpt are more than sufficient.
But he didn't say more about that
--- End quote ---
.
Quite easy to understand he didn'd say more about it...  :-DD

Apochrom:
Many thanks for the answers!

The list is great! It was only now that I really understood the effect of the memory size.
Unfortunately my friend doesn't live nearby and we see each other only once or twice a year. I don't want to embarrass him with this DSO comparison either. He is a big fan of Tektronix and has two old Tektronix analog oscilloscopes that really impress me. He also has a unbelievable amount of knowledge about electronics and I am a very small beginner. That's why I won't talk to him about the TBS1154 any further.

Jürgen

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