The acid test, and a main application, is eye diagrams from differential signals. Some of the diff probes are designed to be soldered into the circuit to be snooped. Good replacement market.
Seems like if you did it enough, it would be cheaper to build your own. Back in the 80s people were building samplers based on electro-optic crystals and picosecond lasers. The bad news was that the circuit had to be synched to the laser rep rate, not the other way round.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Right, you can't trigger a laser with tolerable jitter.
Hypres made a superconductive sampling scope that needed a jug of liquid helium. That didn't last long.
I knew Sadeg Faris slightly--he was a FOAF. That was a pretty cool gizmo.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
I think it was a "slideback sampler" like my tunnel-diode college project, an equivalent-time sampler with a 1-bit comparator.
They managed to spray helium onto the sampler substrate that was really, really close to the input SMA.
They're still around:
Shock line samplers are more practical. Research samplers have got to
300 GHz or something crazy like that, but I think the fastest commercial scope is around 100 GHz. At some point, connectors and cables just don't work.Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
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