Using a Scope on the LAN

I do. A lot.

Documentation, problem reports and so on. For example, my module specs often contain real-life scope plots along the lines of "This is the waveform you should see at the secondary of TR12". Then lots of investigations for clients. "Look, this is what a transient on the powerline does to the XYZ bus".

Au contraire. Almost every day I receive scope pics from clients, asking me what the cause of the glitch, jitter, whatever could be and requesting mod suggestions. Without those plots I'd had a hard time helping them, short of hopping on a airplane and visiting them. I can consciously say that the ability to quickly exchange scope plots has avoided dozens of costly business trips over the last few years. Those to the east coast can eat up almost a whole day just to get there. I only charge 50% rate for travel time but boy does that add up.

The last time was this morning at 6:16am by Jamie Morken.

Absolutamente. Although USB works fine as well. GPIB is a royal pain in the neck.

Until the first virus shows up, and your scope turns into a pumpkin, two days after the warranty expires. It's USB keys plus Sneakernet for me.

Cheers,

Phil HObbs

Until the first virus shows up, and your scope turns into a pumpkin, two days after the warranty expires. It's USB keys plus Sneakernet for me.

Cheers,

Phil HObbs

Thou shalt not use scopes that are Windows-based. Too slow for me anyhow. I guess mine is quite impenetrable for a virus because it doesn't have a mainstream OS.

I think your PC must have a virus, it is posting messages twice :)

martin

Cool.. :) I didn't know that sort of thing was going on.

Also, I might look for Jamie's oscillograph too. I don't catch all the posts on here..

D from BC British Columbia Canada.

It's not as popular here as on other NGs. The German group de.sci.electronics often tons of scope pics in some threads. I still have to figure out how to do those "instant uploads". I always have to fire up FTP and all that. But attaching s scope plot to an email only takes seconds.

You know you'd own a Prologix GPIB adapter if that 2465 of yours could actually dump plots out via GPIB. :-)

(Yes, GPIB is a royal pain, no question there.)

Rats, and I was posting from my scope. ;)

Joerg, I agree completely about Windows scopes...but you can't get really quick digitizing scopes without it. :(

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

My Agilent 6000 has a web interfacem, which I find useful for a couple of things : Printing & saving traces from any PC without having to use any special software Sending SCPI commands to do things like setting unusual time intervals that can't quite be got from the front panel (e.g. to make one bit of an unusual baudrate fit one division exactly)

Has anyone heard of an actual scope virus? Seems to me it could be quite likely. I'm sure I have seen (pictures of) them running windows

Don't know what you mean by quick but my GDS-2204 does 1GSPS realtime and is definitely not Windows-based. If it were I wouldn't have bought it.

things :

can't quite be got from

exactly)

I have no problem doing that via USB. If I'd have my druthers I'd even try out one of those USB radio dongles. Now that would be cool.

I have a 20 Gs/s Tek TDS7704B. Windows XP.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Wow! But your employer also allows for fat budgets.

Not so good. Why did they do that?

That TDS7704 is around the price of a really nice new car :) (Driving a rust bucket? :P ) Financed... I bet it's like making car payments.

Just 2Gs/s real over here and fits the work I do. I've yet to see a windows logo...

D from BC British Columbia Canada.

A few years back, LeCroy was suggesting that you load a virus scanner in their Windoze based scopes if it was network connected.

Oh man ...

I've used one of their scopes at a client last year. For five minutes, then I had enough of it. Frigging slow. I asked them whether they had a real scope.

We have an Agilent network and spectrum analyzers that runs Windows and they suggest the same thing.

We also have a Tek spectrum analyzer with Windows, and interestingly Tek has done a much better job than HP at optimizing the Windows start-up time... the Agilent machines are well over a minute (like a regular desktop PC), whereas the Tek is probably no more than 30 seconds. Somehow this alone makes me a little more confident in Tek's ability to make Windows a viable OS for test equipment than Agilent, even though logically I'm sure there are plenty of good "Windows tweakers" at both companies, it was probably just a matter of whether or not they happened to be on the design teams.