Products > Test Equipment
Tektronix New 3/4-Series Scope (June 4th!)
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: PixieDust on November 13, 2022, 07:38:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: JPortici on May 09, 2019, 05:54:00 am ---At every fair i've been on since the launch of the 5 series i've been bitching that they need to throw away everything they have -starting from the TPS- and replace them with a new scope using ONE or TWO of their new asics.
One asic has 4 ADCs inside and exposes 4 ADC inputs. For god's sake get a clue and do what every single competitor is doing, accessible scopes for the engineers of the future and small businesses
every time i was told to wait and see in the next six month *wink wink*
let's see.
--- End quote ---
Can anyone elaborate?
--- End quote ---
This post is from 2019.
PixieDust:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on November 13, 2022, 11:28:09 pm ---This post is from 2019.
--- End quote ---
Yes I know, I was trying to figure out what Tektronix was/is doing that people find less than optimal.
JPortici:
--- Quote from: PixieDust on November 13, 2022, 07:38:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: JPortici on May 09, 2019, 05:54:00 am ---At every fair i've been on since the launch of the 5 series i've been bitching that they need to throw away everything they have -starting from the TPS- and replace them with a new scope using ONE or TWO of their new asics.
One asic has 4 ADCs inside and exposes 4 ADC inputs. For god's sake get a clue and do what every single competitor is doing, accessible scopes for the engineers of the future and small businesses
every time i was told to wait and see in the next six month *wink wink*
let's see.
--- End quote ---
Can anyone elaborate?
--- End quote ---
Yes: The Tektronix TPS series is one of the very few truly isolated scopes on the market. This is different than floating the scope (or the DUT) because in a regular scope all grounds are tied together, that opens up to niche applications such as
- Monitoring several circuits that ARE floating at the same time, such as primary and secondary in a power supply, or fuel injectors
- Monitoring differential busses as single ended
- Monitoring different parts of a circuit using a different reference point, for example using one channel to measure the current sense resistor directly at its two terminals
And all at full bandwidth, things you can do with differential probes as well, of course, but you have to drop big ones for each probe if you want both high bandwidth and low CMRR
The problem with the Tek TPS is that it is a very old architecture, over the 15-20 years it has been on the market it has been updated only once, just to remove the CF slot and give an usb port for saving screenshots.
At its heart it still uses the very old asic with 2.5kS memory per channel, it is a very expensive, very limited scope, but it still is one of the best tools for the job.
Tektronix has been updating all the lineup, minus the TPS series so that is why i started asking at every fair i went if they had the plan to.
After all they had this new ASIC that would do everything, couldn't they come up with isolated front ends for this one as well? (IIRC the TPS has the analog signal going into an optic modulator, which is demodulated on the board and then fed to the ADC, that's why it is so noisy)
"confidential" answer was that there was something coming out in 6 months, every time.
Once it was the new isolated probes. Works of art but ludicrously expensive
Then the 3/4 series, no isolated version
Then the 2 series, it retains the battery power and has a very interesting form factor. Love it, would get one or two immediately. IF ONLY it has isolated channels.
Alas, Siglent came out with a 2 channel scope with 2 isolated channels, however they are only two. We usually need at least three
David Hess:
--- Quote from: JPortici on November 20, 2022, 07:21:25 am ---Alas, Siglent came out with a 2 channel scope with 2 isolated channels, however they are only two. We usually need at least three
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I have seen some oscilloscopes with isolated channels where the external trigger channel was also isolated, as it should be.
JPortici:
Three ANALOG channels ;)
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