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Tek DPO2024

Weird, but when I look at web sites I keep seeing these ads:

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This one was on a Christian Science Monitor news page, about the UPS Airbus crash.

Interesting that Tek compares this to Agilent and LeCroy scopes, but not Rigol or R&S.

I have a DPO2024 and it's pretty bad. It runs Linux and takes forever to start up. About 20% of the time, if you turn a knob, like volts/div, it just ignores you. Triggering is problematic, and the AC trigger coupling was clearly done wrong. I called Tek about the AC thing, and they blew me off. Another time a Tek telemarketer called to sell me stuff, I noted the bugs, and he hung up on me.

It does have a nice big screen. The timebase sequence is 1-2-4, not 1-2-5.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Reply to
John Larkin
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Yup. They do seem to have got the message a bit, though.

In about 2004, I spent about an hour on a conference call with _Tektronix_factory_engineers_ explaining to them that a fast scope lives and dies by its step response. It was all news to them. :(

Carl Battjes is probably rolling over in his Florida retirement community.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Ditto the frownie.

Oh, I forgot to complain: my DPO2024 step response is peaked, ringy, probably to kiss the advertised 200 MHz bandwidth. Based on risetime, it's about a 180 MHz scope. A lot of scopes (LeCroy, R&S) are peaked. Our Rigols aren't.

Used to be, when you bought a Tek scope, it had a gaussian response and you got more bandwidth than the spec. My 7S14's all have over twice the guaranteed bandwidth!

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Reply to
John Larkin

Tek forgot how to build scopes around 2000. They do seem to have recovered a bit--the MSO series are pretty interesting.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Seems the pricing is on par with the Agilent DSO 200x series. It's interesting that Agilent has a software option for 1M points, they came out with it in March. And it looks like they copied Agilents Mega Zoom billing it Wave inspector. It appears to 'look' the same.

Also the Serial decode is not an option, I wonder if its software decode or a hardware decode.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

that Tek compares this to Agilent and LeCroy scopes, but not Rigol

I hate Agilent 'scopes with avengance :( Most illogical things I've come across...

Reply to
TTman

Any digital scope needs buttons DEFAULT SETUP and FORCE TRIG. My DPO2024 has both, but I've never seen FORCE TRIG do anything useful.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Reply to
John Larkin

FORCE TRIG is useful if you're not getting anything on the scope in normal trigger mode, and want to see what the inputs are doing. I used it a few times yesterday.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Well, I have the MSO4000 at work. I used to love Tek scopes in the early 2000 ish, but this new scope is really crappy:

1: Booting the scope, if a 10:1 probe is attached, it will not discover the probe attenuation setting, so to get correct measurements, I need to unplug all probe and re-attach them for the scope to recognize them 2: The scope freezes from time to time, plenty of FW updates from Tek, but nothing solves it 3: The Active probes really works badly when overdriving it, applying a square wave. The offset at the zero portion of the square wave is really bad. An old DPO2000 scope, with a passive probe works great here. 4: The add-on SW is buggy. It installs fine, then one day the option is gone again. Need to brink the entire scope to get it back. 5: The trigger doesn't work. I have a nice DC trigger line, but the scope does not trigger at that line intersection. I haven't found a work around for that 6: Attaching a current probe work fine. Turn off the scope and the LEDs in the current probe is dim, so during standby the scope has leakage current running in the probe, may not be good for the probe 7: Takes 4 minutes to start up...

Other than that its a nice scope, but at times I just wished I had my old tek back or even the crappy Hameg 205

Cheers

Klaus

Reply to
Klaus Kragelund

Brr, thanks for the report from the trenches. I'm spoiled, of course, since on my bench I have a TDS744A and a TDS694C (total cost $3500ish).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

I've got a TDS460, how do those compare? I find the trigger, acquisition and measurement are as good as the name deserves; the user interface, however, suffers (it takes about a second to respond to a single button press!).

Contemporary HPs (54600 series) were as good, with the main difference that the menus worked perfectly (immediate response!).

I forget if the 54600 series offered a 4 channel >200MHz model; the TDS460 is 4 channel 350MHz. I know the 54600 was only dual channel 100MHz (and

20MSPS at that).

The TDS1xxx in the "portable" (the actually-portable shallow plastic) form factor were pretty bad too, comparable to Rigols of the same day (in the

2000s). Rigols today (DS2xxx) are fully better than the TDS1xxx ever were, not even counting price.

I think around 1990 is when Tek gave up on scopes and forfeited to HP/Agilent and the Chinese brands.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Reply to
Tim Williams

At work, we have the DSO2024 and an MSO4xxx. Both are as described in this thread, with this addition: the MSO's cursor adjustments don't work. The 'a' and 'b' adjust knobs do absolutely nothing to them, in any mode (including activating the 'cursor' menu). No kidding.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Reply to
Tim Williams

Strange, I've used the 54600 series before and found them quite excellent. Menus are the same as any others of the day, but actually fast. And they give you more buttons and encoders so you spend less time dicking through menus.

Plus you can play Tetris (54600B) or Asteroids (54622B). Try that on a Tek! ;-)

I understand the older HPs had some strange triggers. From what I've seen, new Agilents look just as nice as the older ones (plus colorized menus, traces, antialiasing, and their acquisition ASIC stuff that speeds up waveforms), with standard menus and the speed you'd expect.

Scopes in general aren't very logical, to a newbie. Most of them have the same features and layouts, so, calling any particular one 'illogical' isn't very, well, logical... (The ones that *do* have silly layouts, like the early Rigols, deserve such adjectives however!)

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Reply to
Tim Williams

The TDS694C is from 1998ish, and is a thing of great beauty. 10 Gs/s on all four channels simultaneously, 125 ps rise time, no overshoot. So I think the demise was around 2000 rather than 1990. Sad, anyway.

2 Samuel 1:27 "How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished."

('Tis the human condition, of course.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Far as I am concerned if it doesn't have a tunnel diode it ain't a Tektronix.

Reply to
jurb6006

Well, mine all have CRTs, anyway. ;)

If you haven't used a 694C, you don't know what a pretty scope is like. Mine has the 120k points/channel option, which isn't that much but is a whole lot for a Tek, especially at 10 Gs/s. (Okay, so I'm in love. Shoot me.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Not on a DPO2024. Press it all you like and you still don't get a trace, or a trigger.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Reply to
John Larkin

You obviously didn't wave a dead chicken over it, as it clearly states on page 3 of the manual. Tsk, tsk, what will these customers think up next. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Oh, so THAT's what the dead chicken in the accessories box is for. I thought it was some new kind of probe. Maybe I should RTFM.

Speaking of dead chickens, we just discovered a cool little British pub on an obscure street next to the ocean in Pacifica. They have Brit beers on tap (I had a Bass, Mo had a Black&Tan) and fish+chips. But the fish part can be fried chicken or a fried seafood combo. We had fried oysters and chips, with a side of fried oysters.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Reply to
John Larkin

No surprise there.

If you ever see fish & chips in a Japanese or Korean restaurant, try it. Our local Japanese place (run by a Korean family) makes the best fish and chips I've ever had within a 7,000 mile radius.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

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