Rigol DS1202Z-E entry level scope (200MHz, 2 channel)

[Fungus]

One is more expensive so the decision is between you and you wallet.

You know that is my answer but Batronix has both for the same price.

Look for the Rigol somewhere else...? 

https://www.tequipment.net/Rigol/DS1202Z-E/Digital-Oscilloscopes/?v=0

[tv84]

 

TEquiment has the Rigol DS1202Z-E for €270 and the Rigol DS1054Z for €315 ?!? 

[CharlotteSwiss]

a few hours ago I made my order: no Rigol, I preferred sds1202x-e (I almost rolled the dice, I was also in favor of this rigol)
 

[tv84]

a few hours ago I made my order: no Rigol, I preferred sds1202x-e (I almost rolled the dice, I was also in favor of this rigol)
 

War's over!! Let's go home!

[rhb]

It simply found a new home 

[CharlotteSwiss]

maybe he chose the wrong house, he risks some blaze 
The war is all for me to follow, even if I have made my choice 

[martinot]

It depends a lot on how outside China price is after goverment subvention to Rigol for export.

 

Is it true that the Chinese regime (CCP) gives subventions to Chinese scope vendors?

Does not sound like a fair trade and fair market competition (like CCP, at least officially, claims that they strive for and wants).   

[rhb]

In English the word is "subsidy".

The DS1202Z-E is not bad, but it has serious bugs.  The one I found today is that the eye diagram triggering doesn't work, c.f "Scope Wars".  But at least it does produce a decent FFT even if the defaults are wrong.

Have Fun!
Reg

[rhb]

In case you are interested in the DS1202Z-E, but not following Scope Wars, you might be interested in the DS1202Z-E displaying a 1.25 GHz signal.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/scope-wars/msg3119382/#msg3119382

Reg

[Fred Basset]

I can't Believe I am having to ask a noob question 

i already have the 06.01 firmware on my new scope and tried the update to the 06.02

It is supposed to be automatically recognized right?  Mine isn't.

The USB is recognized, it is 8GB formatted with FAT32.  I know it used to be 4GB, but now I read the limit is much higher?

Exploring the USB on the scope, it recognizes it, it displays the files, but it will not "run" the DS1000Z-EUpdate.GEL file.

I have that file on there and nothing else.

Is it that you can use larger thumbdrives, but it will only update from a =<4GB one???  Only it looks like I would have to buy a 10 pack of no-name drives from Amazon to get one that small.  The big names ae not making them that small anymore.

[Fred Basset]

Oh, and talking of subsidies - I read an intersting piece last month over wht TCL TVs are so good, but so cheap.  It is supposed to be because the Chinese Government are quietly subsidizing them, so you get a much better TV than you would expect for the price.  If they are doing this with TVs, then it is perhaps not much of a stretch of the imagination to think they might be doing the same with other electronic products?

[rhb]

I used a 16 GB drive.  I installed 04.06.01, then installed 00.6.02.  No problems. I created  subdirectories on the drive for both updates.  Copied the "04" to the top directory, did the update, deleted that GEL and copied the "00" GEL to the top directory.

Good luck.
Reg

[Fred Basset]

I used a 16 GB drive.  I installed 04.06.01, then installed 00.6.02.  No problems. I created  subdirectories on the drive for both updates.  Copied the "04" to the top directory, did the update, deleted that GEL and copied the "00" GEL to the top directory.

Good luck.
Reg

Thanks for this Reg, I will have to try again. I am probably doing something stupid (senior moment?) but I certainly could not see anything wrong at the time. I could see the file on the scope, it just refused to recognize it as an update.  Mine has the 04.06.01 on it already, but the 00.06.02 is not being recognized as an update.  Let me try again, make sure I have the right files and the right format on the drive.  Your 16GB drive, do you remember if that was FAT32?

Really Reg, thanks...being stumped by this feels too silly for words...

[Fungus]

Thanks for this Reg, I will have to try again. I am probably doing something stupid (senior moment?) but I certainly could not see anything wrong at the time. I could see the file on the scope, it just refused to recognize it as an update.  Mine has the 04.06.01 on it already, but the 00.06.02 is not being recognized as an update.  Let me try again, make sure I have the right files and the right format on the drive.  Your 16GB drive, do you remember if that was FAT32?

Really Reg, thanks...being stumped by this feels too silly for words...

From all the posts I've read the problem isn't the capacity or the format, it's something to do with the boot sector.

Most formatting techniques don't touch the boot sector (even the ones that claim to do so!) so the fix isn't a couple of mouse clicks. I usually end up using command line.

nb. I haven't done a definitive study on this so I might be wrong.

[tv84]

From all the posts I've read the problem isn't the capacity or the format, it's something to do with the boot sector.

Most formatting techniques don't touch the boot sector (even the ones that claim to do so!) so the fix isn't a couple of mouse clicks. I usually end up using command line.

Not so. Different capacities might change the "reserved sectors" in order to accomodate future info about those different sectors.

I've tried in the past to systematize this issue but most people were not willing to contribute... They just want their own problem fixed quickly...

I think it's all a problem of timings, bad programming and the (vendor disk) validations that Rigol usually does on  the USB disks.

Nonetheless, with a linux formatted drive, I thinks chances are greater because the format will be similar to the scope's "natural" programming language.

[rsjsouza]

Perhaps try to format it as FAT16? There was a time when Rigol's DS4000 series had a bug where FAT32 pendrives were terribly slow to access and FAT16 was the only one really functional.

[rhb]

I used a 16 GB drive.  I installed 04.06.01, then installed 00.6.02.  No problems. I created  subdirectories on the drive for both updates.  Copied the "04" to the top directory, did the update, deleted that GEL and copied the "00" GEL to the top directory.

Good luck.
Reg

Thanks for this Reg, I will have to try again. I am probably doing something stupid (senior moment?) but I certainly could not see anything wrong at the time. I could see the file on the scope, it just refused to recognize it as an update.  Mine has the 04.06.01 on it already, but the 00.06.02 is not being recognized as an update.  Let me try again, make sure I have the right files and the right format on the drive.  Your 16GB drive, do you remember if that was FAT32?

Really Reg, thanks...being stumped by this feels too silly for words...

I *think* the USB drive is still as formatted by the factory.  I'll do some testing later.

Reg

[martinot]

In English the word is "subsidy".

Ahh, thanks (used the same word as Rf-loop)!

In English the word is "subsidy".The DS1202Z-E is not bad, but it has serious bugs.  The one I found today is that the eye diagram triggering doesn't work, c.f "Scope Wars". 

I think Chinese pure players start to have quite decent and good hardware. At least in low end and middle market.

It's software that generally makes the big difference between western developed products and chinse developed products, and also support and documentation.

Generally, for some strange reason, it seems to be more difficult for many companies to be good at software engineering than hardware engineering. No idea why.

[martinot]

[ deleted by me and moved to another thread ]

[rhb]

The 16 GB flash drive I used to update the DS1202Z-E is formatted as FAT32.

Reg

[martinot]

 [ deleted post by me ]

Moved this topic about Chinese subsides to a new thread here, as this is better to discuss further outside a product related thread (want to avoid too much OT):

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/chinese-government-gives-subsidies-to-rigol-(and-siglent)-for-scope-export/msg3124814/#msg3124814

[Fred Basset]

The 16 GB flash drive I used to update the DS1202Z-E is formatted as FAT32.

Reg

Thanks very much Reg, that narrows down possible problems a lot.  If it fails again, I will have to try a different USB drive.

[rhb]

Here's a brief explanation of getting the DS1202Z-E FFT to work acceptably:

select "math" from the "math" menu

select "FFT" in the "operator" menu

turn "operation" on

go to the next menu using the bottom RH button

select "triangle" from the "window" menu

select "Memory" in the "mode" menu

press "acquire"

set "mem depth" to "12k" or longer.  It has no effect on the FFT length, but "auto" is so short as to be useless.

Go back to the "FFT" menu and adjust the Hz/div, center, offset and scale options.  The screen shot is for a 10 MHz, 0 dBM output from an HP 8648C.  Once you get something comparable, go back to all the other settings and experiment with then to see what they do.  Many do not actually work, e.g. "anti-aliasing" on/off.

The use of the triangle window gives the best spectral resolution as it makes an isolated  frequency peak a sinc(f)**2 which has the lowest sidelobes of the options offered.

If you want to save a screen shot, stop the sweep, press print and then resume the trace.  Otherwise it takes a minute to save a PNG file.

Have Fun!
Reg

[Fred Basset]

That is MUCH appreciated Reg, and certainly counter-intuitive.  Must have taken you many hours to work those out and I am grateful for the help.

[rhb]

Drove me bonkers.  And *every* time you power up the scope you have to reset *everything*.

But once you know how to set it, it's fairly usable for checking harmonics from an RF oscillator though a bit shy on dynamic range as are all 8 bit DSOs.   It would not prove that your transmitter was in compliance.  But it beats not having anything.

The sad part is that with better design it could do quite well, though I've been told that HW resources are maxed out.

A lot of the issues are FW design flaws, e.g. the need to stop the scope manually to save a screen shot quickly.  That *should* be automatically done by the FW when you press the "print" button.

Shipping the scope without the ability to save more than 12K samples is a major gaffe.  However, I've seen as bad or worse by the A list OEMs.

Have Fun!
Reg