Using 2 scopes for 4 channel measurement

[Harvs]

I picked up my new scope today and thought it was a good time to break out the programming manual.

I did some tests feeding the trigger out of the DS2072 into the external trigger and channel 1 of the DS1052, and got a trigger delay of 210ns +/- 5ns across all time bases on both scopes.  So I though that wasn't too bad, the trigger delay could be corrected for, so it just leaves the uncertainty over +/-5ns.

So I learn't a few SCPI commands (I never realised it was as easy as it is,) and hacked together a quick piece of test software to see if the concept was going to work.  I recon it worked ok, and it'll be easy enough to write an SPI decoder for it.  The screen shot attached was using a 200kHz SPI bus that's driving a DAC.  Both 2nd channels of the two scopes are capturing the same clock signal to show the channel alignment.

[free_electron]

yep. that works fine. i used to do that with two 54645d's. that gave me 4 analog and 32 digital channels. ideal to debug a huge fpga.
i had the fpga actually generate a trigger signal and both scopes looked at that. zero delay

[marmad]

I did some tests feeding the trigger out of the DS2072 into the external trigger and channel 1 of the DS1052, and got a trigger delay of 210ns +/- 5ns across all time bases on both scopes.  So I though that wasn't too bad, the trigger delay could be corrected for, so it just leaves the uncertainty over +/-5ns.

There's a mini-discussion of the Trigger Out at the Rigol DS2000 thread (starting here). BTW, the trigger delay when using the External Trigger is slightly less: ~163ns +/- 4ns (of jitter) - see image showing 8x 250ps jitter.

These delay times (~160 and 210ns) are not very good, IMO, and rather a disappointment of the DS2000. I think a typical Trigger Out delay should be closer to 50ns maximum - and certainly with less jitter.