Rigol scope

And it has x-y mode :-). The DHO914 has half the analog BW but still

Very nice scope. I have 2 at home (electronic and programming desk, separate at opposite ends of the room) -- I work 100% from home -- and we purchased a whole bunch of those for a company to use as everyday scope. We have a 50GHz Tektronix in its dedicated room for signal integrity and other high frequency testing but those DHO924S ones are on every desk now.

I really like it, even put my beloved Tek 2467B that I used before for almost everything on a far shelf and never used it ever since. Have a monster 4GHz 40Gsps LeCroy WR640Zi with all options on my electronic desk too but don't remember where I powered it up last time -- it is 8-bit, extremely complex, makes noise like a jet at takeoff so it is only used when that bandwidth and those advanced options are really needed that is extremely rare.

DHO924S covers almost everything. Logic Analyzer is pretty basic but sufficient for almost everything so my another jet sounding monster, HP

Very happy with it, would recommend to everybody.

The thing is small, light, and almost noiseless. You don't have to use that small screen -- just connect to it with your browser and get that screen on your PC. A smallest articulating TV mount is also very helpful -- it makes it hanging in the air freeing up your precious desk space, allows to move it where it is needed and move it away when not needed.

And it works from 12VDC :)

We have a 7 GHz LeCroy that nobody uses. The menus make no sense and even LeCroy doesn't understand them.

We have maybe 20 of various Rigol scopes and I don't think any of them has ever broken.

We do have one Tek scope with galvanically isolated inputs and trigger. That can be very handy.

Sadly that is about twice the size I could fit into the equipment.

I have the HDO1074, hacked to 250MHz and a Siglent 100MHz scope, hacked to 750MHz. Never uses the Old tek scope any more.

Last week I discovered the first failure of any scope I ever had, the Siglent behaved funny, non liniear input behaviour. Turned out I was careless, in an earlier test with conducted immunity, I had monitoring directly on the scope input and fried the channel. Now I have a 3 channel scope, repair is almost the same price as a new one :-(

My bench scope is a 350 MHz Rigol hacked to 500. We bought four and they threw in the upgrade. But 750/100 is an outrageous ratio.

One thing I've noticed about digital scopes, and told the kids today. Using the external trigger, jitter is higher than when triggering off a vertical channel. External trigs are often quantized to the ADC clock rate, but a channel trigger works off the software-filtered waveforms.

My summer intern built a GaN fet based 650 volt pulse generator with a transmission-line output transformer. Six different versions, actually.

...and matrixing them to give vertical and horizontal vectors. That way the 'scope picture actually represents the movement of the stylus and allows objective correction of errors in the playback geometry. I am particularly interested in the vector angle at which transient high-speed phenomena occur (crackle). The angles and patterns tell me how to select the right stylus and adjust the playback azimuth.

No need for rotation but an analogue 'scope needs a modification to prevent screen-burn. I have been using a suitably-modified one for the last 30 years and the display shows everthing I need to know. A cheap digital 'scope has proved that it is not adequate. At lower sampling rates a cheap digital scope shows the crackles as a row of widely-spaced dots but a faster sampling rate seems to work in batches, so the dots join up but it misses some of the phenomena completely.

Perhaps it is possible to play around with the settings and get some improvement but the instruction sheet is not helpful.

This is portable equipment for use in real time in front of an audience (or the owner of the records).

I have 15.000 or more 78s and access to many more in other collections. There arelots of different speeds, groove-shapes and recording characteristics, this player has to cope with them all. The HMVs of the

Is it not possible to optically play a record these days? I can understand that you need a clear representation of the depth (at a 45 degree angle) of each groove wall over the length of the groove wall. So you might want to put a stylus through it first to remove dust and anything else in the grooves. If you can get that information into a computer then it should be possible to do various kinds of signal cleanup operations.

We bought this little 2-channel, 200-MHz Siglent for a road trip--$300 open box from Saelig.

Yup. The external trigger is useless for fast stuff. Another good argument for a 4-channel scope.

Sure, why not? Sounds fun.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I'm not sure if we have a use for this, but it is fun.

We also tested the EPC23104 monolithic GaN half-bridge driver. It blew up. Not ready for prime time, looks like.

Nice!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Not shellac 78s, the reflectivity is different from vinyl and the grooves are often 'U'-shaped or badly damaged. The 45-degree (or other angle) movment is a compromise when they are played with a round-ended stylus. Goodness knows what an optical system would make of it.

Not in real-time, which is the purpose of this machine.

Yes, but I need the vertical and horizontal signals for the analogue processor, so they are already avaialble and much simpler to use without tilting the oscilloscope.

I rectify the differentiated signals so that the fast transients show up more clearly.

I have none at all - and the deadline is about 6 weeks away.

Thanks for the warning.

We got the scope. It has a built-in signal generator that will do AM or FM or PM sweeps. It has insane levels of signal processing and dozens of touch-screen menus.

It has HDMI so we put the display on our giant OLED on the wall. That's kind of cool.

I gave it to the kids so I can have my 500 MHz scope back. This one is way too complex for me. The manual is just a little piece of paper with a QR code that doesn't work.

"HDO900 Series Digital Oscilloscope"

The best feature is the DEFAULT button: get me the hell out of here and be an oscilloscope again.

That's what happens when the tech writers are paid by the page. You get oversize fonts, 1.5 line spacing, wider margins, large headers, large footers, detailed tables of contents, small page size (for more white space), detailed indexes, lengthy tables, copyright notices everywhere, etc. Well, Rigol omitted the index, so the authors might have had a conscience.

However, I can't really blame Rigol for the aforementioned crimes against usability. The user manual needs to be small enough to be easily carried with the instrument. An 8.5 x 11 inch manual is not going to fit in the official Rigol bag.

Agreed. Enjoy your new scope.

One of my clients bought a few of these a few weeks back, and decided to return them. I believe they then bought some of the Siglent SDS800X-HD series instead, which they are much happier with. I can't say for sure what the issues were, but I know they needed the ability to make bode plots, and the Rigol proved to be pretty useless for that. I don't think there was a reference input either (to sync up to a lab reference oscillator).