EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: erikg on September 28, 2016, 04:45:46 pm
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Hi, all;
I'm an older newbie and I'm setting up my bench. I fortunately have good business connections with local surplus dealers, so I've picked up some decent gear cheaply.
I have an analog oscilloscope(Tek 2213), but I ran across a working HP 16500b mainframe logic analyzer with an oscilloscope card in it (16533A) that looks appealing. It also included a 16550A logic analyzer card (100Mhz state/500mhz timing) and and an apparently higher spec 16517A "high speed" 16 channel logic analyzer card with 4 ghz timing/1 ghz state.
Mostly I've been working with micro controllers and PC motion control (rebuilt my CNC mill) so I've wanted a logic analyzer to look at I2C stuff and 3.3 and 5v logic. This mainframe has the potential to permit cross triggering and viewing of analog on the scope in sync with the digital signals on the analyzer (I think). I may try to design/build a brushless motor controller in the future, so mixed digital/analog analysis has some interest.
My questions to anyone experienced with this hardware are:
1) Are there any things to look out for with regard to oscilloscope measurements made with the 16533A? I've watched Dave's video on DSOs and the specs of the card look ok if old (1 Gs/sec, 2 channel, up to 500mhz bandwidth, 32k sample memory per channel).
2) I'm guessing in this configuration I can use the 16 channels on the 16517a by default for logic analysis, and use the 16550a if I need more channels? The "high speed" card seems to be superior in every way except channel count. Or is the 16517a more of a niche card for specific purposes, and I should work with the 16550a most of the time instead?
Anything else I should look out for with this setup? I'm pretty familiar with X windows and networking, so I've got that covered.
Erik
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I have a 16500A that was upgraded to the 16500C, with the 16550A and 16532A boards among others.
1) Are there any things to look out for with regard to oscilloscope measurements made with the 16533A?
It is a DSO, so behaves as do other DSOs. I've found the interface of a plain DSO faster to manipulate quickly, as compared to the interface screens of the 16532A, but it will get the job done. However, you can configure to trigger based on a LA state, which will be useful in some situations.
Or is the 16517a more of a niche card for specific purposes, and I should work with the 16550a most of the time instead?
If you don't need the higher sampling rate of the 16517A, then it won't matter which you use. The 16517A can see shorter glitches than the 16550A if you have a noise problem. I've used my 16550A cards to do a bus capture of a Z80 system accessing ROM, and needed more than 16 channels to accomplish that. Read out the contents of the ROM as a byproduct of tracing the startup ROM checksum test, as I didn't have a standalone PROM programmer that would handle that device. Had to do it in three passes as the sample memory was not deep enough, but could set a multi-step trigger on the next starting address I needed for the next batch.