really nice Rigol scope

Rigol also released a spectrum analyzer. IIRC 1.5GHz for $1500. Dunno if that includes a TG or not.

Just an aside...

Your Power Supply looks the same as mine, which I opened up today to see if I could find out why one segment of the display wasn't working. The build standard is very, very shoddy. I would not ship anything like that, and would sack anyone who tried to.

I ordered a Rigol 'scope a few days ago, largely based on good reviews and opinions. I hope it's made to a better standard.

Cheers

Anyone bought one? IIRC the TG is $500.

Yes it does...

Cheers

Right next to mastech power supply, might as well take advantage of cheap chinesse labor as long as we can.

There will be profit money to spend soon.

George H.

Hi Syd, I recognized the mastech supply too. Mine looked pretty good. It's a 50V, 3A linear supply.

George H.

Thanks I was about to ask what a TG is. Tracking generator, so what exactly is that? Like the 'chirp' source on the SRS770?

George H.

Rumor has it David Jones (you know the Aussie) is going to test drive one real soon.

It's a sinewave generator whose frequency tracks the spectrum's analyzer's sweep. So you can do stuff like plot filter response, circuit trace couplings, crystal resonances, cable loss vs frequency... essentially scalar network analyzer sort of things.

You can also use it as a signal generator!

We opened up one Mastech and it looked OK.

I have a Rigol DS1052E, $355 on Amazon, and it's a very nice scope. It has a lot of features that the Tek scopes, 3x the price, don't have. It comes with nice probes, too.

It tracks the Analyzer's center frequency, so you can do sweeps on filters and limited network analysis. Seems such a waste not to include it. But if you don't do filters then I can see why.

Cheers

Is that the scope that I recently got mail offers on? They are priced around$4..5k?

I hope that isn't yours sitting there? If so, I'll have to go out and get one now! damn it! ...

btw, nice test image. I do think I know where that came from :)

Jamie

This was about $9K. I sure wish it was 4 or 5!

Well, it's down the hall, and I get to borrow it in exchange for chocolate.

It's a "TTL" output from one of our products; I took the pics today for the customer, who wanted to know the rise/fall times. The driver is four paralleled sections of an HCT245, with a 39 ohm output resistor. It's about twice as fast as the "typical" rise/fall times on the data sheet.

I should have used an ACT245 maybe. That would be lots faster.

You have to watch the sweep rate when testing filters due to group delay.

If the box did 3Ghz or so, I'd be there.

Where is a datasheet? Their website that looks fluffy enough to be designed to sell consumer appliances:

doesn't seem to show any links to docs or specs on my 3.x Firefox.

If you have a chance to email me a datasheet, I'd be thankful. I'd like to compare it to Agilent's new 3000X 1GHz offerings:

What kind of Chocolate?

I'm still saddened by the loss of the Scharffen Berger factory from Berzerkeley. Now I order it online in bulk bags of 5g squares.

There isn't a better Chocolate IMHO unless you go up to $9-15/1.75oz bar high-end artisan chocolates, like Amedei Porcelana:

THAT is the gold standard of all chocolate. There simply is nothing else as perfect.

But why torment the user with potentially more cabling fussiness if they don't need the speed?

I'd like to get some time to review the quirky and shoddy aspects of the Rigol DG1022 function generator, which I purchased as an experiment to see what they have to offer.

The DG1022 doesn't inspire me with enough confidence to consider them for a measuring instrument at this time.

Though I expect things will only improve with time. They may really have their act together with these scopes. If you aren't finding problems right off the bat, that's encouraging.

It took me just a few minutes from powering up the DG1022 to find glitchy stuff in the output. That and the UI issues.

Gotta go eat my turkey burger...

Most of the Tek and Agilent scopes are made in asia, too.

Yesterday Tektronix brought pizza in as a bribe to show us their new scopes. The MDOs (mixed-domain-oscilloscope = oscilloscope + logic analyzer + spectrum analyzer) were really slick. Cross probing in the time and frequency domains would be really useful chasing EMI issues. OTOH, I don't think I'll be asking the boss for $28K, after buying an Agilent MSO-X3104 two months ago. ;-) BTW, if you're looking at MSOs, the Agilent has far better bus decoding.

How do you like your 3000X ?

I love all my Agilent scopes, and never use my Tek ones anymore. I'm drooling over the idea of getting a Yokogawa next though...

On the 3000X, check out in the statistical analysis (Measure|Statistics):

relative_sigma -- makes standard deviation relative

and

Max count -- set to a finite value makes the stats compute as a moving average of the past N measurements.

I persuaded Agilent after many attempts to finally implement these features. The stats used to be just a continuous accumulation, and you had to reset all the time if you changed something and wanted the stats to not have the old signal in the accumulation. The adjustable moving average is very nice for seeing things change in real time.

Tek has some sort of moving average on their stats (In the MSO4000 series), but it doesn't appear to be a simple one, and I'm not 100% sure what's going on there.

The relative std. dev. is probably obscure to most people, but is indispensable for me in the application of, for example, measuring the relative energy stability of a pulsed laser. It is a pain to have to always type the numbers into a calculator, so this feature is a boon to people doing lab research type work.

What these mid-end scopes still lack, that LeCroy has in spades, is the ability to display secondary plots in real time of measured parameters and/or calculations derived from measured parameters.

For example, my LeCroy can compute the relative standard deviation of a pulse area, then plot the time trend of the pulse area AND the time trend of the relative uncertainty.

This sort of real time data analysis is killer for laser and other sensitive optics/physics alignment and tweaking experiments.

I'll have to re-kindle my conversation with Agilent about the prospects for them moving in the direction of this sort of built-in data analysis one of these days.

Just prior to them releasing the firmware with these statistics enhancements to the 3000X series, I had begun to describe to them how they might begin to integrate parameter trend plotting capabilities in to the existing UI.

I'm not sure how difficult this might be architecturally for them. Nor do I know if they'd rather just keep these features on the higher-end scopes, in order to not motivate people to buy the little scope if it can "do it all."

Scopes are my favorite tools! I wouldn't dare fix the toaster without one.

delay.

I think they have a 3 GHz variant at three-four times the price, but no tracking generator option available.

?=3D/