PCI interface

Yeah, thats very similar to what I'm talking about except that it will, of course, be done on the pc. The point is to shift as much of the hardware and software as possible onto the pc because most people have pc's, pc's are general,they tend to be more cost effective, and have better suite of tools(both software and hardware).

My idea was essentially creating that type of scope but the only draw back I see(as most) is that the amount of memory it has(looks like 10MB per channel). I figure that using the pc for memory can increase that by a factor of a 100. But if I were to use the memory of the pc I might as well use the display, hard drive, user interface(mouse, keyboard), etc...

I just don't see any need for such a scope being 7k$+. (Atleast they could add a gig of memory).

What I don't understand is how they achieve the 5GS/s rate. Do they interleave ADC's or what? How else can they get that fast? Are there ADC's ICs that do that now?

Thanks, Jon

It is probably a matter of interleaving and/or using proprietary chips. IIRC Maxim is boosting on their website that they can deliver custom ADCs with a much higher bandwidth than available on their website. Still, the ADC is only a very small part. You'll need to tackle all kinds of other problems too like clock jitter and the probing part.