Test Equipment Suggestions for Embedded SPI work?

Hi All,

I am looking to buy/lease test equipment for embedded work. I need to do some SPI work probably with HC908 family parts. I borrowed a very NICE Tek DSO model TDS5054B and it worked great for capturing the SPI data on my prototype board. I think this DSO is overkill and very costly for what I really need.

Maybe a general purpose approach using a few pieces of test equipment for bringing boards up Any suggestions please?

TIA, David Evennou

Reply to
David Evennou
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If you want an excellent and incredibly versatile instrument for the absolutely lowest cost, get an HP 16500 series mainframe and whatever plugins you need from ebay.

A 16555A 100Mhz state/500Mhz timing plugin and a 16530A/16531A scope plugin will do all you'll need and more.

The downside is that it's noisy, has a big footprint, and the floppy drive can sometimes be troublesome.

The upside is that you can configure it with digital scope cards, logic analyzers and pattern generators so that you have just the instrument you need.

If you want something small and light, an HP 1652A goes for about $300 on ebay, has an 80 channel logic analyzer and 2-channel digital scope. Again, the floppy drive can be troublesome.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

I've never used anything other than an o'scope for SPI development, and not even a storage scope. I've sometimes had to write temporary loops that generate SPI traffic at sufficient rates to trigger the 'scope, but other than that, it's not been a big deal.

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          Michael Kesti            |  "And like, one and one don't make
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Reply to
Michael R. Kesti

A decent multi-meter is a must as the first item that should be in your kit. An reasonably good oscilloscope is also very useful, especially if you are looking for timing problems. One with a dual triggerable timebase is very handy in this respect. I am perusing datasheets at present for a suitable replacement for my old Tek 465 which has served me very well for so many years that I forget when I bought it (second hand at that too).

You should also consider the development tools as part of your test kit as well IMO. I find that I can diagnose a large number of problems by writing Forth words and using a digital probe to detect the change of state of various pins (usually logic problems). The PC can be pressed into duty as a data monitor on a number of simple serial interfaces (synchronous and asynchronous at reasonable speeds).

On buying secondhand equipment, always see the equipment running before you part with your money. Use your nose on it and ensure that no un-expected smells are given off (I know one peice that smelled wet and warm that I advised a friend not to touch). If the gear came from reputable previous owners it should be perfectly servicable for a long time to come and will be significantly less cost than brand new.

Having said that I must admit that I am liking the look of the new Fluke Scope-meter at present and it seems to be reasonably priced.

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Paul E. Bennett ....................
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Reply to
Paul E. Bennett

If you have the budget for it I like the Agilent Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes. A couple of analog channels and 16 logic analyser channels. Covers a nice range of troubleshoot/debugging and the built-in syncronization between the digital and anlog side is occaisionally invaluable.

Robert

Reply to
R Adsett

These equivalent to the HP54645D, aren't they? Very nice instruments, apart from the 2A/16D, the 'mega zoom' feature is really nice. Most DSOs and logic analyzers only store a few K points, this one stores up to 1M points. That means you can set your timebase slow enough to capture an entire transaction and can still zoom in on timing details. Combined with the pretty advanced triggering (for a DSO) you can almost always get the thing you want to see on the screen.

Someone else mentioned a multimeter to start by measuring the supply. In addition to that, always measure your supplies with a scope as well and cycle through all the available timebases. It is not uncommon to find a DC supply that gives exactly the required voltage on your multimeter but oscillates severely. This is especially true for switching supplies.

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Stef    (remove caps, dashes and .invalid from e-mail address to reply by mail)

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Reply to
Stef

Deep memory (megazoom etc. ) is THE most useful feature on any digital scope. It saves so much time as you rarely need to set up any special triggering (if any at all)- just grab a big lump of data and zoom in on the part of interest.

Reply to
Mike Harrison

While a DSO is VERY nice, once the voltage levels are confirmed, it really isn't necessary. For a lot of serial protocol analysis including SPI, I use an inexpensive USB Logic Analyzer. Rocky Logic

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has 8 & 16 bit products that are much lower cost than any scope. I use the ANT-8 because 1) I don't need the additional channels, 2) it was lower cost than the ANT-16, and MOST IMPORTANTY, 3) it has a longer capture buffer than the ANT-16.

Regards

- Bill Knight R O SoftWare

Reply to
Bill Knight

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