Hi welcome to another Evie blabber. This one comes from the Eevblog forum from a user called Stevie Jian He asks about the New Rye Goldie's 1074 Z almost specifically the MSO 1074 Z which has the mixed signal capability MSO all the sixteen digital channels with the probes and turns it into a mixed signal scope and he asked, is it worth paying the extra money for that mixed signal capability and well, it's a really interesting question, so let's take a look at it now. I don't have a MSO 1074 Z to actually show you, but it doesn't mean we can't discuss it and come to a bit of a conclusion here. Now this, if you haven't seen my previous videos, is by far the best bang per buck scope on the market at 399 US dollars or at least at the entry low-end range of things anyway.

So ah, 399 Us Dolls. Fantastic value, but the MSO To get that, you can't just upgrade this one. You can't hack it. You've got to physically buy these 16 MSO channels are built into theirs physically extra hardware and you get the probes as well.

And you've got to step up a 70 megahertz model and it's over $800 We're talking US dollars here so it's more than double for that 16 channel logic analyzer. Is it worth it? More than 400 bucks? Well, look, you can buy it. You know one of these. Sayle logic chips only logic analyzers pretty good.

USB based um scope just eight. You know, a slow-speed scope and they're dirt cheap. You can. and there's tons of others on the market like Logic analyzers.

Got law, take your pick and most of them are pretty much under like our $400 There's no shortage of picks. Is it better to get one of these or whether or not to buy a separate. Why don't you get allies up? Well I've always said that MSO scopes are the Ducks guts. They really are mixed signal scopes.

There's nothing like being able. This one does have mixed signal capabilities. 16 digital channels. There's nothing like having the time correlation on the screen.

By time correlation I mean being able to see to trigger off your analog channels and then being able to see your digital channels at the same time. So maybe a digital signal in your circuit caused you know something to happen or maybe something in your analog power supply. For example, there's a hiccup in there or something like that and that is upsetting your digital channel. So it's It's really good to be able to just do it on the one instrument in the one scope.

So don't get me wrong, MSO Scopes are really the Ducks guts. and well, you know if money's not an object then yet just by the MSO capability. For this, it's alright. But there's a few things you need to consider about whether or not it's good value for money, because if you're buying the scope, you are looking for being per buck for value for money.

Now the advantage of the MSO scopes we're talking about this one here is that yes, it does have a really high sample rate. For example, this one is one gig if one gig samples per second on the digital channels which is really quick if you're looking at only 8 channels. It gets hard to 500 mix samples per second if you go for all 16 channels and it's got a lot of memories. Standard 12 Meg memory which is for a channels have to 6 Meg for all 16 channels and that's a decent amount of memory.

So you might think speed wise in memory wise, this is a pretty good logic analyzer, but it's not that great actually. Well, the sample rate is really good, right? The sample rates fantastic. but most digital stuff you're doing these days is. it's not like it was 20 years ago where you know you had a whole board full of hundreds of chips and they'll all interconnect all digital interconnected and you had to debug them all.

Now it's all like serial buses and things like that. So typically when you look at logic analyzers, you're looking at doing serial buses SPI spy buses I Squared C Buses You know, get canned buses. Maybe you know things like that one Boyer buses so you know often you don't need those eight or 16 logic channels that you normally. Now the other thing is is that logic analyzers aren't as good as scopes if you really want to look at a signal properly, you need to use an oscilloscope channel A proper one of these four channels on your scope.

Here, you've got to use those that they're better than a logic analyzer because the logic analyzer will only give your one or a zero below a certain fixed threshold and it doesn't take signal integrity into it. So if you haven't probed your circuit properly, you can get dodgy results in your logic analyzer and not know where those faults are coming from. and you can chase red herrings until the cows come home. It can be horrible, so you don't want to get caught in that trap.

So if you if you can what you ideally what you'd want is a 16 channel oscilloscope that would be this long and you could hook up all 16 channels so you can actually see what your digital signal actually looks like. So that cannot be beat. Now the killer thing about this scope at $399 not that is $399 is that it's 4 channels with 399 dot for $399 And as I said, we are these days often debug in digital logic analyzer. Typically you might be debugging serial interfaces.

Well, you've already got four channels. If you're going to spy bus that's three channels and you still got one channel left over to our trigger and in correlate off an analog Channel as well. So really, you've already got a kick-ass four channel logic analyzer in here with the built-in serial decoding as well. Yeah, it's a software option.

It's like a hundred twenty bucks or something. Or if you happen to have hacked your scope, you might already have it. So it's a pretty darn good useful logic. And what fantastic logic analyzer.

For $399 you already got it. You don't need the mixed signal capable. It's only if you need those additional channels. and with four analog channels, well, you know your requirements have to be a bit niche these days to require those extra sixteen digital channels, in my opinion.

Anyway, now it's not all our roses with this. Yeah, it's fast. Yes, it's got a decent amount of memory, but that memory does not have real-time sample compression in these scopes, so might sound like a lot of memory. If you've got 24 Megan this might sound like a lot, but you can chew up that real quick if you're at a fast sample rate.

So if you've got a digital signal that you're trying to a logic signal that you're trying to capture in your logic analyzer, you've got 24 mega memory. Might sound like a lot. But if you've got one packet over here, one packet over here, and lots of dead space between them, or just lots and lots of packets. and you want to look at all those packets and capture them all at once.

24 Meg ain't actually a lot. So a logic analyzer with what's called, well, generically called a real-time Hardware compression takes out all those dead time so it makes better use like segments and memory does in these analog scopes. but that's on the analog channels. On the digital channels, you don't have that like you can get on a standalone logic analyzer.

if you buy that. it can make much more effective use of memory. Or if you've got one of these are USB Sayle our logic analyzers for example. Yes, they're quite slow.

Ok, it's not the one gig sample per second. it's only like limited to the USB speed which this one's a USB - that's limited to like 20 Meg or or something like that. 20 make samples per second, but good enough for most serial buses these days. And it's got an infinite amount of memory so it's hooked up to your computer so you know you can stream your you know terabytes of hard drive space or whatever you got.

So fantastic. and you can get those really cheaply or you can get you know one of these are the type ones. This one doesn't have hardware our compression but other ones in similar price range. rather 400 bucks do have Hardware sample compression.

Oh my goodness. So really, are these aren't the Ducks guts in terms of logic analyzers so you don't have that Hardware compression and the other thing you don't have which is a biggie. Logic analyzers have what's called timing analysis and state analysis With these: MSAs You do not get state analysis ie. you can't feed in an external clock and then trigger and then sample user external clock as your sampling point.

It's not often done these days, but that's an advantage of these are: USB Well, a real logic analyzer is that you've got the state analysis built in. You can feed it an external clock, use that as your sample clock so all your timing is in synchronization with the product you're trying to test. You know, get that with Ms onus, right? So there's two major disadvantages there are with an MSR compared to one of these. the other one is that these screens.

they're really, really cramped. I mean you try and jam sixteen channels on there right of your digital staff plus your four analog stuff and you're really pushing Brown stuff up here with a pointy stick. You really are trying to fit it all on this screen. This is one area.

Logic analyzers is one area where hooking up to a PC has massive advantages. Absolutely massive advantages. You have a massive screen. You've got your mouse as a better user interface for it.

You've got often much better search capabilities. You've got the keyboard, the mouse. everything else. Much better than trying to do it.

I'm poking around on an oscilloscope so well. The mixed signal capability in these scopes is very, very handy. They are very fiddly to use compared to a PC based logic analyzer. Unlike a digital storage scope before using this as a regular analog oscilloscope, it's easier to use your knobs and everything else than the PC.

It's the opposite theologic analyzer. So what do I recommend after all that? Well, I recommend that you don't spend the extra money on the logic analyzer the MSO upgrade for this unless you have a specific need or you're really you know, or money's not much of an object. But if you're paying, if you buy in one of these mugeez, probably a bit of a concern for you, so you're better off getting one of these using that. Getting the software option for the serial decode.

you've already got a fantastic four channel serial debugging logic analyzer built in and well just get one of these. You know, if you need to, um, you need a lot more memory. For example, Infinity our memory sample rational state analysis. Get one of these external logic analyzers if and when you need it and you might be thinking well, I Really, really love the time correlation of the mixed signal scope on here, being able to time correlate between your analog and your digital channels.

and if you buy one of these external USB ones, well, you gotta lose that capability. Well, no, you aren't. Check out the back here tomorrow trigger output: We have a trigger output there so you can feed that trigger output to the input. One of the input channels to this.

RTO Whatever logic analyzer you've got doesn't need to have an external trigger input. even just one of your regular input channels. Set that to trigger it and bingo you can capture. You can get time collation.

not as convenient because you've got to use the scope and you know the concept computer screen and you can't and I'm like overlay them as easily unless you like imported the data and wrote a script or did something weird like that. Anyway, you can still do it. You still get pre and post trigger information with your our logic analyzers going at your pre and post trigger data here and you know exactly where your trigger point is on the screen. and well, it's not that hard so it's not quite as convenient as the MSO built into these.

but you can still do it. Beauty: So there you go. I hope I've answered your question very lengthily there. I'm Stevie G Yeah, it's just I Don't really think it's worth it.

As cool as I think mixed-signal scopes. ah I really love them I really do. But yeah, I think there's better value to be had by just by the base model scope and getting a separate logic analyzer. So there you go.

How long did I waffle on for? this was supposed to be a quick lab I'm glad I didn't have that timer thing that I was supposed to do anyway. Hope you enjoy that. Um, by the way some people have said um I don't ever advertise the air power. it's my radio show I do with Chris Gamble every week could be doing it for like four and a half years and something if you're not aware of it.

the NPR an electronics radio show but podcast, whatever you want to call it. um every week. So there you go. Yep, I Calm LinkedIn down below and also I don't mention enough ever I'm very active on Twitter So if you want my just daily rant on anything or just my family holiday snaps, it is my personal account as well as an Eevee blog account.

So you get my personal politics and everything on the Twitter account as well as some electronics and other stuff that's happening around the lab occasionally dumpster-dives or whatever. I'm always taking in tweeting photos. So there you go. Follow me on Twitter on E V blog I don't use that Facebook No, forget it Anyway, catch you next time.