When I first got my DS1054z I too wanted to test it on some little oscillator circuits. The first one I built was a basic multivibrator using 2 NPN transistors, to make a nice square wave output. I put in 2 sets of timing capacitors so I have two frequencies to choose from.
I also built a couple of crystal oscillators using CMOS gates. One basically identical to the circuit above, and another one using a slightly different circuit. At 20 MHz I don't get a good square wave displayed though. Scope bandwidth, or oscillator?
My comments on j.a.mcguire's problems are these:
First, I'm one of those people who think that the "Auto" button is For Emergency Use Only.
If you know the approximate voltage and frequency of your circuit, go ahead and use the Vertical and Horizontal scale controls to set the scope up to give you an intelligible picture for your anticipated signal, and then modifiy the settings based on what you see. The "Auto" button will make you lazy and mislead you as to what is going on, as it seems to have done in this case.
Second, whenever possible use the 10x attenuation setting on the probe, and make sure that the channel is properly set to 10x probe atten. as well. The 1x position loads the circuit more and reduces the effective bandwidth of the measurement system and should only be used when you really need it, like with very very small signals.
Third... the breadboard and clipleads. For circuits oscillating at high frequencies these are only going to give you problems. And 5MHz is "high enough" to qualify here. I offer one suggestion as to a better construction method, that is nearly as fast and easy as the breadboard, below, and which will provide much more stability in oscillating circuits.
Fourth: One of the great features of the Rigol scope is that it is really easy to make good screen captures. Just put a USB stick in the front panel hole and when the scope tells you that it is recognized, push the "print" button on the right hand top of the panel, under the "Help" button, and in a few seconds to a minute or so you'll have a great print of your screen saved on the USB drive. It won't have the correct date and time though, and will have a generic sequence filename, but you can figure that part out easily enough when you transfer it to your computer for upload or display. (One of the "bugs" of this scope is that it sometimes takes a long time for the file to transfer to the USB stick, like up to a minute or more, but it eventually will get there. Sometimes it goes faster if the scope is Stopped before you start saving the screenshot.)
Good luck with your new scope! I'm sure you'll like it as much as I like mine. It's a great unit for the price and its few minor bugs are easy to live with.
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