EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: silviustro on August 17, 2020, 04:51:32 am
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Hello everyone,
Recently I've become the owner of a shining not new quite used oscilloscope. A Tektronix TDS524A.
After performing some scrubbing and repairs, I managed to get it somewhat working, It's not all the way there, but it's working well enough to test out most of the functions and get a hang of it.
It is quite an nice piece of equipment, but there is something that I still don't understand, What are the AUX channels for?
I have read the manual and service manual (https://www.tek.com/oscilloscope/tds520a-manual/tds520a-524a-540a-544a-service-manual (https://www.tek.com/oscilloscope/tds520a-manual/tds520a-524a-540a-544a-service-manual)) and there is no use case mentioned for them.
Enabling the AUX channels disables the main CH1 or CH2, so what's the point of having them if you can't display more than the two main channels at the same time?
I had hoped I'd have somewhat of a limited 4 channel scope with the AUX inputs, that would work good enough for slower digital applications like UART, SPI or I2C because of the limitations of the AUX channels.
Any Tektronix fans out there know what they're used for? (Or if I'm doing something wrong) Thanks.
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The aux inputs are for external sync pulse ,very useful for alignment of professionals vcrs on 1985-1995 years.
No too much use today.
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Thanks for your answer.
But, besides using it for sync, they're able of showing waveforms on screen, albeit, at a lower resolution than the main two channels.
The problem is that I cant figure out how to show said waveforms on screen without disabling CH1 or CH2. There is no technical reason as to why it couldn't display all 4 waveforms at the same time. The Oscilloscope has dedicated independent hardware for all of the channels and aux channels.
What is true is that the acquisition board only has 2 ASICs, compared to the 4 you'd find on the TDS540.