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I was at a trade show yesterday and got to play with expensive looking digital oscilloscopes from teledyne lecroy. I think these were something that started at like 8000 and worked their way up with options.

For the life of me, I wasn't able to even display the square wave from the calibration point. The interface was a combination of truly cheap looking and feeling knobs, buttons and a touch screen.

Even the teledyne sales guy had a hard time just displaying 1 waveform from 1 channel. he was easily able to get some weird 3d looking chart to appear, but I have no idea what the point of that was.

Setting AC or DC coupling required dicking around with a touch screen for a while. WTF.

It's possible I'm old fashioned, but these devices were just shitty computers with crappy software in the form factor of a scope, but not even usable as a scope unless you have 30 minutes to try to set the thing up.

When did scopes start to get designed by completed idiots?

Reply to
Cydrome Leader
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Den 27-06-2014 17:12, Cydrome Leader skrev:

When they decided to use Windows in a scope :-(

--
Uffe
Reply to
Uffe Bærentsen

nowadays, engeneer that knows how to build a high GHz capable scopes dont know a lot about user interface ...

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Jean-Yves.
Reply to
jeanyves

Actually, it would cost too much to build a scope with the old fashioned switches and all that.

But hey, we got cars with user configurable touch screen dashboards (but you're not supposed to TALK on a cellphone while driving), and in dash DVD players.

Ain't it wonderful ?

I wouldn't take one of those new scopes for free. I don't even like the 2465 ! Turn the knob and hear relays click, bullshit. Plus they forgot how to make a trigger ciuit by then unless the ones I saw had a problem. The old 422 out triggers all of them.

Nope, no interest whatsoever in that new junk.

Reply to
jurb6006

Cydrome Leader formulated the question :

get Tek and hit the auto button.

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Reply to
OldGuy

One would believe a company building these scopes could afford at least two engeneers, one for the internals, and one for the user interface.

Leif

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beslutning at undlade det.
Reply to
Leif Neland

you also need a third engeneer to make the two others talk to each other !

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Jean-Yves.
Reply to
jeanyves

Agree. Knowing that Rigol actually produces scopes for Agilent, I suspect there are agreements between brands and oem's that the the oem cannot enter into direct competition by offering high resolution displays. Only the crappy resolution keeps me from buying a chinese scope.

Cheers!

Reply to
c4urs11

enter into direct competition by offering high resolution displays. "

Try implementing thst policy on a CRT.

OK, it can be done, but then, there is this segment of the population that will not take this lying down.

for example - I wil not buy a car without a FACTORY INSTALLED ASHTRAY.

And I do not smoke. I just think for all that money you should geyt an ashtray.

Call me crazy, ?I have no problem with it soever, but they have called other peolle crazy in history, have they not ?

Fukum.

Reply to
jurb6006

They clearly lack any user interface people, and have never asked a customer "what do you think about this?".

The extra sad part is all the buttons you'd even need are on the front panel, so it's not like all features require poking your fingers at the screen- just the ones anybody might actually need.

My guess is in the generation, lecroy will remove the sensitivity and timebase knobs. That stuff will be buried under some obscure menu that's hard to locate, or maybe you'll need a cell phone app to drive the entire thing.

Reply to
Cydrome Leader

The Tektronix DSO's generally work very closely to a standard analog scope. You have to know that trace brightness has nothing to do with rep rate, but otherwise, it will seem very familiar. I have an HP 54200 I pulled out of a trash bin, and it has one of the most frustrating user interfaces I've seen.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

A DSO is also an FFT analyzer. Two in one!

Reply to
dave

for

even

LeCroy scopes have always had strange to weird user interfaces. Teledyne did nobody any favors by buying them up. Who know what may have happened to the already bad user interface if given as a toy to an incompetent lesser scion.

?-(

Reply to
josephkk

Both Tek and Agilent have made that error and backed away from it.

?-/

Reply to
josephkk

something

to

for

even

up.

Horseshit. Only the scriptkiddies are that bad.

?-/

Reply to
josephkk

switches and all that.

you're not supposed to TALK on a cellphone while driving), and in dash DVD players.

2465 ! Turn the knob and hear relays click, bullshit. Plus they forgot how to make a trigger ciuit by then unless the ones I saw had a problem. The old 422 out triggers all of them.

Well if you have a 2465 you don't want, send it to me. I will give it a home where it will be respected and used.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

the economy to an eletronic circuit. I have that. Reading it did not make me rich by any means of course. But the understanding, how he equated capital with capacitance, work with inductance and taxes with resistance, I consider brilliant.

Really?! How about a link or something?

Reply to
josephkk

the

back

make

more

He wrote an 8086 version of tinyBasic that was included on ROM (remember that) in the original IBM PC. It helped a lot in making the thing useful out of the box. Then Visicalc and DB2 hit and some good programmers editors and WordPerfect hit with NearLetterQuality dot matrix impact printers. It was a forgone issue in a few years. Few people saw it, but Bill did.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

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