$1M scope

On a sunny day (Wed, 11 Feb 2015 05:25:50 -0800 (PST)) it happened Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote in :

But it runs windows :-(

100 GHz electrical signals barely exist. No coax can transmit a 100 GHz signal very far. To avoid moding, the cable and connectors have to be tiny, so losses go up.

Good thing! Manufacturing has gobbled up out equipment budget for the next few years.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

On a sunny day (Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:39:52 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Did you watch the whole video (a bit tiring OK), in the demo they use an optical detector to see the interference between 2 laser beams (light). So the pathway from the detector to the scope is about nill. Seems like something that could be useful for that laser fusion setup,

It made me wonder if I could not make a half real time - half heterodyne scope from cheapo parts for say 10 GHz, the phase correction for the LO oscillator references I have some idea for, that guy who speaks first in the video in front of the whiteboard seems to know what he is talking about. Main drawback is of course it does not run Linux :-) Is there an opportunity for a Highland product here?

No.

Our 7 GHz LeCroy runs Windows. You can run a web browser on it, or Word. It really doesn't need a big box with knobs and a screen... it could just be a little USB thing. The big scope makers are reluctant to do that.

Doubt it. I have toyed with building a cheap TDR, but it's hard to compete with Tek stuff on ebay.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

On a sunny day (Wed, 11 Feb 2015 09:31:04 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

In that video at the end, in the factory (production test) they show a stand where he says: "This is where we do the windows update" (says it twice sigh).

Now imagine a scope that does an automatic windows update (would be connected to the LAN I suppose to get normal data from it)... I do not want that, failure modes pre-programmed.

Well, not sure what you mean, the litte SDR USB sticks I use for this spectrum analyzer go to about 2.2 GHz,

not a scope though, cost 35 $ or so.

That Le Croy thing has nice hardware: waveguides, mixers, etc, it is worth getting a look at all the boards in that video, very nicely done. There is always something to learn.

That's a little unfair. On our Agilent beast the capture system writes directly to video memory in very nearly real time. Waiting for the thing to boot is, however, a real pain in the backside.

My old XP computer can stream video to the screen through an Ethernet connecton. That's more bandwidth than my brain needs.

My DPO2024 runs Linux and takes forever to power up. And it's buggy. FORCE TRIGGER does nothing. AC triggering is plainly brain damaged. It randomly misses about 10% of the knob detents.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

My old XP computer can stream video to the screen through an Ethernet connecton. That's more bandwidth than my brain needs.

My DPO2024 runs Linux and takes forever to power up. And it's buggy. FORCE TRIGGER does nothing. AC triggering is plainly brain damaged. It randomly misses about 10% of the knob detents.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

My old XP computer can stream video to the screen through an Ethernet connecton. That's more bandwidth than my brain needs.

My DPO2024 runs Linux and takes forever to power up. And it's buggy. FORCE TRIGGER does nothing. AC triggering is plainly brain damaged. It randomly misses about 10% of the knob detents.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Think about that a little bit. The slow path in this is the video data, or more accurately, your eye perceiving the video data. I can assure you that USB3 data rates will keep up with your eye. A USB interface would not need to be the bottle neck in a well designed system.

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Rick

On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Feb 2015 11:51:33 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Must be old version. Imagine you fork out 1M$ for that LeCroy Few years later Microsoft announces that win version is no longer suppported. Your competitor reads you display via the installed rootkit.

Someby tried an email attack via sendmail on this Linux box few days ago:

From /var/log/maillog

Feb 8 18:10:03 .... hundreds of entries Feb 8 18:21:17 panteltje12 sendmail[8913]: t18H9vdY008913: ruleset=check_rcpt, arg1=, relay=[58.250.99.0], reject=550 5.7.1 ... Relaying denied. IP name lookup failed [58.250.99.0]

Took me 12 minutes to notice it, 30 seconds to kill it.

I would be helpless in MS windows.

That was a Chinese IP (not to see it must be in China). Iptables will make sure it will never even hear from this system again.

I think if you need to use a scope for serious work the last thing on your mind should be fighting attacks. Suppose that thing was in that laser fusion setup, and part of it, the damage that could do!

Or the Iranian hexafluoride centrifuges of course.... LOL

Yes. And there is no better version.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Feb 2015 08:14:14 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Latest kernel is 3.19:

The OS isn't the problem. Tek's app is the problem.

And I sooner throw away the silly oscilloscope as try to reinstall Linux.

For the search engines:

Tektronix DPO2024 Review

Slow, buggy, some functions broken, doesn't have guaranteed bandwidth, peaked non-Gaussian step response, lousy support.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Feb 2015 09:08:30 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Yes, just viewed a youtube video that shows the erratic trigger:

found an old posting by you too:

Too bad about the service, that would be the only reason to but something overly expensive. Seems Rigol is better value for money. There are some other digital scopes from Tek that I used and I found those noisy and not very pleasant to work with. But I am not really into digital scopes, good analog is still the best. if you need to keep the trace maybe digital yes.

But that 100 GHz LeCroy shows it CAN be done right.

Tek did make some good scopes,. It is like soldering irons, everybody was using Weller, after I changed to a Voltcraft I would not want a Weller if I got money to use it. :-)

Dunno what it is about American companies, having some problems with my web hoster, WildWestDomains or something (was Godaddy, that was OK, but taken over, and there you go), takes ages to get a reply, 'cannot reproduce problem' no in depth answer or knowledge, looks like I will run the webserver at home again.. I called them script-kiddies and said goodbye. But I have already payed for a few more month... Was looking for a cheap hosting in Russia (solidarity with them, protest US ways), those are not cheap at all, or no ssh access. Anyways DIY is cheapest.