Products > Test Equipment
I just used a fully digital oscilloscope for the first time
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Fried Chicken:

--- Quote from: bdunham7 on April 21, 2024, 05:22:14 pm ---
--- Quote from: Fried Chicken on April 21, 2024, 03:35:48 pm ---No, the whole thing was just slow.  Pushing a menu button, it took like 5 seconds to display a menu, changing a menu was decently fast, but that's after 10 seconds of waiting for it to display a menu.  Changing the timebase was disastrously slow, whether in the MHz or Hz range.  It was almost impossible to find the signal without overshooting first.

This isn't a scope I bought, I was just testing it to make sure it's working for someone and comparing it to my decently calibrated 2230.

--- End quote ---

I made a video of my TPS2024 booting up and looking at a 1kHz 1V square wave with some basic operations such as channel coupling, cursors, zoom, vertical scale, timebase, FFT and measurements.  Is the TBS1072B comparable or slower?

https://youtu.be/toOrmcHtwws

--- End quote ---

The TSP2024 is about twice as fast, but I would still consider it super slow.  Unless I needed the digital functionality, I would much prefer an analog scope for looking at that signal.




--- Quote from: tggzzz on April 21, 2024, 03:54:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: Fried Chicken on April 21, 2024, 03:24:32 pm ---I'm agnostic on the interfaces, and I understand different paradigms fundamentally work differently, but holy hell sometimes you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater when embracing new technologies.

--- End quote ---

It is irritating when people do that. Sometimes it is beneficial to realise that if you know how someone earns their money, you can predict what they will say.

--- End quote ---

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here


--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---Much of the speed will depend on whether they have competent programmers who use C, or whether they use fairytale programming languages.

--- End quote ---

Both HP and Tektronix made instruments based on Smalltalk, in the late 80s early 90s. Those programmers knew what they were doing.

--- End quote ---

It's possible those late 80s early 90s digital scopes were faster.
tggzzz:

--- Quote from: Fried Chicken on April 22, 2024, 10:12:51 am ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on April 21, 2024, 03:54:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: Fried Chicken on April 21, 2024, 03:24:32 pm ---I'm agnostic on the interfaces, and I understand different paradigms fundamentally work differently, but holy hell sometimes you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater when embracing new technologies.

--- End quote ---

It is irritating when people do that. Sometimes it is beneficial to realise that if you know how someone earns their money, you can predict what they will say.

--- End quote ---

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

--- End quote ---

That there is validity to your point.
That sometimes people have a financial interest in ignoring/downplaying the point.
vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: Fried Chicken on April 21, 2024, 03:24:32 pm ---

The Analog scope is orders of magnitude faster.  I knew the digital scope might be a bit slower, but not to that ridiculous extent.  Even the autoset ranging was slower than simply dicking with the buttons.  The digital scope was so slow I'm genuinely surprised analog scopes were discontinued in the mid 90s and didn't continue production/development/refinement to this day!

If I were working in an environment and someone took my 2230 away and gave me something as slow and clunky as that digital scope, I would have revolted.

I'm agnostic on the interfaces, and I understand different paradigms fundamentally work differently, but holy hell sometimes you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater when embracing new technologies.

--- End quote ---

Back in the 1990s, at the TV studio where I worked, both Tek & HP would send reps to show us the "latest & greatest" DSOs.
They would fiddle with them for a while & show us a few waveforms, then someone would spoil everything by saying "let's look at a video waveform".

The very earliest ones were starting to get a bit marginal at displaying a line rate signal (a whole line of analog TV occupies around 64 us) but would "sort of" show it, although some would have problems with aliasing against the colour subcarrier frequency, but they all came to grief if asked to display a Field rate signal (some 20ms wide).

At the long time/div rate required, because of the minimal memory in "those distant days", the sample rate was reduced radically, so that most of the frequency components of the signal were lost in a sea of aliasing.

They were patently useless for the task.

The "gurus" would try to argue that the mess was still a valid, if different type of display, with the inference that we were "dinosaurs".
That was far from the case, as by & large, we were all quite favourably disposed towards doing things digitally.
The important part of that is actually "doing things", which those early DSO's could not!

A few years later, we eventually got a Tek DSO which was usable for Field rate signals, although it did have an overlay of a "beat note" between the sample rate & the colour subcarrier.

When we bought a new 'scope for the transmitter site it was a 200MHz Iwatsu analogue!

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on April 22, 2024, 11:35:42 am ---The "gurus" would try to argue that the mess was still a valid, if different type of display, with the inference that we were "dinosaurs".
That was far from the case, as by & large, we were all quite favourably disposed towards doing things digitally.
The important part of that is actually "doing things", which those early DSO's could not!

--- End quote ---

That "blame the user" and "you don't count" attitude is an extremely annoying practice.

As someone that pushed the bounds of technology for most of my professional life, I became adept at distinguishing "new" from "better"...

Most new technologies were "new" but not "better". Some weren't even "new". 
Too many required advances that would have won Nobel/Turing Prizes - if the advances actually existed!
Some had useful advantages in limited circumstances.
A small proportion were a significant advance over the competition.

Frequently the smaller the advance or difference, the more heated the discussions/arguments.
PwrElectronics:
First DSO I ever used was a Tek 2430A in around 1989-1990.  A couple years later a TDS420 and then TDS520 as well as THS720A and TDS220 by the end of the 90s.  Since then, various other Tek DSOs as well as Agilent and Lecroy.  I've liked the 2 Lecroys (mid 2000s era ones) the best.  Some of the Tek models use a 1-2-4 scale instead of the traditional 1-2-5 and that means things not aligned with the graticals.  I still like to use the graticals for quick eyeball measurments even though yes there are on screen measurements and cursors.

The only DSO I've used that really annoys me is the TPS2024 mentioned in this topic.  We have 2 of these at work and one of them is currently in my home lab (checked out during the pandemic).  For whatever reason, these (both do it) will "hang" and be unresponsive to user controls at times as if the processor is off doing who knows what.  I have not had that happen with any other model or brand of scope.
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