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| Tektronix 1-3 GHz touch screen color DSO back in 1989 ! |
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| Wuerstchenhund:
--- Quote from: Leo Bodnar on August 27, 2017, 09:53:14 am ---John Addis later joins in the discussion[/url] which this margin is too small to contain --- Quote ---[...] There was also a culture problem. Tek unquestionably made the finest analog scopes. There was no need to study the competition, as it was inferior. This carried over to all scopes. But the truth was that for the first couple of generations, the competition was designing much better digital scopes than Tek. But no one took them seriously, or really studied the competitive products. --- End quote --- --- End quote --- Unfortunately this wasn't just for the first couple of generations, Tek's overconfidence in its products continued for a very long time, and frankly I'm not sure it's even over yet. The new MDO5 Series, while having some interesting features, looks like another product without a target market. Tek always treated a DSO as a replacement of an analog scope, without recognizing the power that lies in digitalization, and I'm not sure they ever got it. And even when it comes to making DSOs that behave like analog scopes Tek was left behind by HPAK and its MegaZoom-based scopes. That's pretty much why Tek's DSO range has been dominated by underwhelming product after product ever since, which is a shame. |
| snoopy:
--- Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 27, 2017, 02:14:39 pm --- --- Quote from: Leo Bodnar on August 27, 2017, 09:53:14 am ---John Addis later joins in the discussion[/url] which this margin is too small to contain --- Quote ---[...] There was also a culture problem. Tek unquestionably made the finest analog scopes. There was no need to study the competition, as it was inferior. This carried over to all scopes. But the truth was that for the first couple of generations, the competition was designing much better digital scopes than Tek. But no one took them seriously, or really studied the competitive products. --- End quote --- --- End quote --- Unfortunately this wasn't just for the first couple of generations, Tek's overconfidence in its products continued for a very long time, and frankly I'm not sure it's even over yet. The new MDO5 Series, while having some interesting features, looks like another product without a target market. Tek always treated a DSO as a replacement of an analog scope, without recognizing the power that lies in digitalization, and I'm not sure they ever got it. And even when it comes to making DSOs that behave like analog scopes Tek was left behind by HPAK and its MegaZoom-based scopes. That's pretty much why Tek's DSO range has been dominated by underwhelming product after product ever since, which is a shame. --- End quote --- That is simply not true. The older Tek TDS744A DSO catches glitches just as well if not better than a later Agilent MSO6104 scope with Megazoom !! Tektronix were way ahead of their time with their patented digital phosphor technology ! |
| Wuerstchenhund:
--- Quote from: snoopy on August 28, 2017, 02:03:05 am --- --- Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 27, 2017, 02:14:39 pm ---That's pretty much why Tek's DSO range has been dominated by underwhelming product after product ever since, which is a shame. --- End quote --- That is simply not true. The older Tek TDS744A DSO catches glitches just as well if not better than a later Agilent MSO6104 scope with Megazoom !! --- End quote --- And you gather that from a single Youtube video (where the narrator even says towards the end that the Agilent is the better scope)? :palm: --- Quote ---Tektronix were way ahead of their time with their patented digital phosphor technology ! --- End quote --- No, they weren't 'way ahead of their time'. For a start, try to do some math on a signal when the TDS744A is in InstaVu mode. Oops, you can't, because InstaVu works by data reduction (it drops the sample rate and the sample memory) and writing the data directly into the video buffer. Which is why a lot of the scope's features (Auto Trigger, Zoom, limit testing, FastFrame, Math, X/Y, Envelope mode, Average mode, HiRes mode, no single-shot capture, and no interpolation in real-time mode) are unavailable in InstaVu. Needless to say that HPAK's MegaZoom doesn't suffer from these limitations. Tek's idea was to re-create the display of an analog scope (because their basic assumption was that DSOs should just be a modern form of analog scopes), and that's exactly what InstaVu does. You get high waveform rates at the price of being able to do nothing with the sampled data other than look at it. If you want to do something with the data (i.e. use the very basic set of math and analysis tools the TDS offers) then you have to go back to the TDS' 50 updates/s normal acquisition mode. HP on the other side didn't believe that digital scopes should replicate analog scopes, and didn't give up on the advantage of digital signal processing just for high waveform rates (and actually managed to deliver both as an 'always on' solution which back in 1995 was quite a feat, even more so considering that the 54600 Series were on the lower end of the price scale). HP knoew that engineers would want to make use of the benefits of digitalization, but back then a standard scope like the 54600 would still often be used in places where it replaced an analog scope, and where the high waveform rate was useful. LeCroy did go a different way than Tek and HP, not offering high update rates but instead providing a very sophisticated trigger suite which would allow to trigger and capture pretty much any signal devication on its first occurrance, after which it could be analyzed further with the advanced math/statistics and analysis tools their scopes offered. LeCroy didn't build entry-level scopes (they were always bought in from other vendors like Iwatsu), and they figured that their advanced toolsets will more than compensate for the lack of superfast waveform rates. Looking at the market some 23 years later, it turned out that HPAK and LeCroy were right in their assumptions. Keysight is the largest T&M vendor, and of the three big names sells the highest number of scopes. LeCroy is doesn't have the numbers as they can't really compete in the entry-level (for which they offer rebadged versions of old Siglent scopes) but they pretty much lead in the high-end segment (where for some products there simply is no other vendor). Tek however has been on a constant decline pretty much since the end of the analog scope era, and have been for a reason. It would be nice if they finally woke up and smelled the coffee, and started turning the ship around, but all signs indicate that after the separation from Danaher they just continue in their old ways. |
| snoopy:
--- Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 28, 2017, 08:09:21 am --- --- Quote from: snoopy on August 28, 2017, 02:03:05 am --- --- Quote from: Wuerstchenhund on August 27, 2017, 02:14:39 pm ---That's pretty much why Tek's DSO range has been dominated by underwhelming product after product ever since, which is a shame. --- End quote --- That is simply not true. The older Tek TDS744A DSO catches glitches just as well if not better than a later Agilent MSO6104 scope with Megazoom !! --- End quote --- And you gather that from a single Youtube video (where the narrator even says towards the end that the Agilent is the better scope)? :palm: --- Quote ---Tektronix were way ahead of their time with their patented digital phosphor technology ! --- End quote --- No, they weren't 'way ahead of their time'. For a start, try to do some math on a signal when the TDS744A is in InstaVu mode. Oops, you can't, because InstaVu works by data reduction (it drops the sample rate and the sample memory) and writing the data directly into the video buffer. Which is why a lot of the scope's features (Auto Trigger, Zoom, limit testing, FastFrame, Math, X/Y, Envelope mode, Average mode, HiRes mode, no single-shot capture, and no interpolation in real-time mode) are unavailable in InstaVu. Needless to say that HPAK's MegaZoom doesn't suffer from these limitations. --- End quote --- Instavu and DPO is not an underwhelming product enhancement by any stretch of the imagination. No other scope at the time had the ability to catch glitches at the same rate as these Tek scopes. I have measured the trigger rate on these scopes and yes they do deliver on the vendors claims of up to nearly 400,000 waveforms per second capture rate. And yes the sample memory is dropped and yet it still catches the glitches that other scopes miss. And yes a lot of features are disabled with Instavu mode enabled but you are missing the point of this feature. You enable this feature to determine whether or not your circuit has glitches and you don't want to wait days glued to the screen to find out. Who cares about the measurements if you are trying to chase down an intermittent and illusive problem in the design missed by other scopes ! Once you have determined the nature of the problem then you can setup a trigger to catch the glitch in action in normal DSO mode. Also that Megazoom feature on Agilents scopes has that pesky limitation of only providing measurements on the screen data and no more . And comparing a 1995 scope with a 2015 scope that costs megabucks is not a fair comparison when you can pick the Tek scopes up pretty cheap in comparison to this 2015 Agilent model ! |
| Wuerstchenhund:
--- Quote from: snoopy on August 28, 2017, 09:22:44 am ---Instavu and DPO is not an underwhelming product enhancement by any stretch of the imagination. No other scope at the time had the ability to catch glitches at the same rate as these Tek scopes. --- End quote --- That's nonsense, a scope that uses dedicated triggers will if setup correctly find always a glitch on its first occurrrence, as it doesn't have to rely on failure-prone human eyes to identify the glitch. Also, seeing all these glitches fly by in InstaVu mode only shows you that there are glitches, which is great if you're the 'stare-on-the-screen-until-you-see-something-abnormal' type of guy, but usually finding out that there are glitches is only 1/3rd of the work, the other two are analyzing the anomaly (to find out where in your UUT the problem is) and then fixing it. Step 2 already fails in InstaVu so you have to re-acquire in normal mode, which on the TDS700A is dog slow (Tek specifies an update rate of 50 per second). And if you can't trigger on the anomaly because your TDS700A lacks the advanced triggers then you have to rely on the 50 updates/s and the resulting large blind time to capture the glitch so you can do some analysis of it. Great :-- --- Quote ---And yes the sample memory is dropped and yet it still catches the glitches that other scopes miss. --- End quote --- No, it doesn't :palm: That's just your imagination. And like an analog scope, the TDS isn't really 'catching' glitches, all it does is displaying them. Same as an analog scope. --- Quote ---And yes a lot of features are disabled with Instavu mode enabled but you are missing the point of this feature. You enable this feature to determine whether or not your circuit has glitches and you don't want to wait days glued to the screen to find out. --- End quote --- Seriously, if your glitch hunting technique is limited to looking at a screen until you see a glitch then either you're using poor equipment or you have a lot to learn about how to use a scope properly. Especially with very rarely occurring glitches (i.e. say every 10 minutes) there's a very good chance you miss the glitch, because your eyes get fatigued from staring at the screen, you blink, or become otherwise distracted. That's why better scopes come with a set of advanced triggers so you can setup the scope and do something else while the scope will 'see', capture and if necessary process (i.e. build a histogram, which can be tremendously helpful in finding out what's causing the glitch) the data and present you with the results on your return. The reality is that InstaVu is unlikely to show you any glitches that you can't see on a similar old MegaZoom scope, and neither of those can capture glitches better than a scope using a suitable trigger. If you think otherwise you're just deluding yourself. --- Quote ---And comparing a 1995 scope with a 2015 scope that costs megabucks is not a fair comparison when you can pick the Tek scopes up pretty cheap in comparison to this 2015 Agilent model ! --- End quote --- WTF are you talking about? What comparison? |
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