Hi I thought I'd Show you something interesting with Tectronics digital storage oscilloscopes and it is pretty specific to tectronic. Scopes As far as I'm aware, I'm not aware of other brand scopes on the market that actually do this. Now let's take a look at this: Mdo 3000 Series scope I'm feeding in just a a 2 MHz Square wave here. Nothing fancy.

It's all triggered. Everything's hunky dory. and I've got the Uh output. The trigger output of this connected up to my Ryol function generator up here.

so it's generating the 2 MHz signal as well as displaying effectively the waveform update rate of this oscilloscope. Now, we've talked about waveform update rates before in previous video, so I won't go over it again. But look, you know, it's a pretty good scope. We're getting 250 odd thou 250 khz.

which is means 250,000 waveform updates per second, right? It's a pretty, you know, modern, quick scope. And of course that's with the fast acquisition mode on. Okay, so if I turn fast acquisition mode off, then it drops down to, you know, 68 khz. Something like that, 70 odd khz.

But still, you know. quite a respectable update rate. And of course, you'd expect the waveform update rate to change with your record length. So my record length is only 1,000 bytes at the moment.

Like 1,000 samples. Sorry, but I could change it to 10K and it drops a little bit I change it to 100K points Waveform Memory: There you go. it's dropped down to 22 khz there. or thereabouts one Meg Where uh one? Meg Memory: We're talking, you know, 380 390 Uh Hertz waveform updates per second.

Not much at all, but that's what happens when you get the deeper memory. And of course, if you turn fast acquisition mode back on Bingo we're back up to 250,000 waveform updates per second. That's at 100 NS uh per division. But watch this.

Watch what happens if I changed the trigger level. Okay, here's my trigger level, right? It's right in the middle here. Watch this. This is the interesting thing I Wanted to show you what happens if I raise the trigger point above that so there is no longer any trigger and it's got to go into Auto trigger mode.

And of course it is in Auto uh trigger mode. so we can actually go in there. and there it is. Yep, Auto Trigger Mode.

Okay, so if I just adjust that level there Watch What Happens Look at that. Look at that and our trigger frequency has dropped down to bugger. all here. But look at what and you'll probably already noticed on the screen there that it's not very quick at all.

And well, that's confirmed up here. Look, it's got a W drop down to a waveform update rate of like 19 Herz Hertz 19 waveform updates per second. In that Freer running uh, Auto Trigger Mode when there's no trigger tectronics, oscilloscopes drop down to an incredibly low value of waveform updates per second. Very interesting and of course, it'll do exactly the same thing if I Simply remove the input signal here.

So there we go. 250,000 waveform updates per second and boom, we dropped down. You know, 10 or 20 Herz or thereabouts unbelievable. And you can really see that on the screen there too.

In terms of the waveform and how it's uh, you know, a really slow waveform update rate and that is actually a true you know 10 or 20 HZ waveform update rate. It's very, very slow now because that Ryol frequency counter in that DG 4000 series is a little bit Dicky I will actually look at the waveform. So I've got got it on my adelent 3000 Series here. and uh, no, you can't do it on the other on the actual Uh tectronic scope itself cuz then you'd have to trigger off the Uh second Channel input.

So then you're not in that untriggered mode anymore. So that's just the way it works. You need a second oscilloscope here. You can see it's pretty stable.

There it is. Um, you know, 19.9 HZ It's basically uh, 20 HZ And then of course, if I plug my signal back in Bingo Look at that. There we go. we're way back in there.

And then we get that super fast update rate. It does jump around a little bit because there's trigger Jitter uh, stuff like that. but there you go. It's jumped up to the Uh 250 odd khz that we were at before.

So there we go. we have a quite a bit of Uh Jitter on that. probably due to the uh processing. Let's actually turn on the fast acquisition.

You'll see, it's like I can stop that and we're looking at, you know, 70 odd khz or thereabouts. Uh, let's turn fast Acquisition mode on again and Bingo. Look at that. It becomes much more stable in that fast acquisition mode.

but there are periods there where it actually blanks out. Now let's see if we can actually capture that and measure that value of that blanking period. And there you go. Set up the curses there, and what do you know, precisely precisely.

Bang on 25 Hertz. So there you go. It's you know, fine down in there at that. In fast acquisition mode, it it's pretty stable at that 250 K, Mark or thereabouts.

Yeah, what is it? Yeah, there we go. 250 khz. Uh, 250,000 waveform updates per second. But it adds in that blanking period.

There, it's doing something there. Some sort of processing where it stops that uh triggering and stops that waveform. Uh, stops the waveform update rate every 40 milliseconds or so. And there you go.

It has a dead time of 800 173 micros. So there you go. That is interesting. When there's no trigger in that free running auto mode bang, it drops down to a ridiculously low waveform updates per second now.

I've got to say, there's nothing inherently wrong with this cuz it's always sitting there waiting for that trigger to actually, uh, happen in the background and the glitch capture and everything else. So it's you know, everything's just fine there. So in terms of the oscilloscope, it's just that, visually, um, you know, it's just a bit disconcerting. I think.

And the other thing that makes it interesting is that other oscilloscopes don't seem to have this. Let's try the same thing on the agilant. So there's the signal on our agilant Once again, 100 nond per division me measuring that 2 MHz signal and no, my hold off is Set uh to uh, absolute minimum. so there is no hold off there.

That's a way in triggered mode that you can actually reduce the waveform update rates per second. and I might show you that in a minute. But let's uh, take a look at what the? here's the trigger output of the agilant. uh.

scope. So we got. you know, it's jumping around a bit there. So let's uh, Zoom let's freeze that.

There we go. We're looking at 333 Kilz or thereabouts. so you know, 333,000 waveform updates per second. There's the odd skipped one and stuff like that.

But you know, as you know, the Agilant is the fastest updating scope in the industry. So uh, we can actually change that. So let's run it back and let's up the time base on the agilant here. and uh, we can go right in.

Let's go right up and you'll notice that at the higher time base, we should get close to our theoretical 1 million waveform updates rates per second? There we go. 1.01 mahz. So super quick. But once again, it's not absolutely, uh, consistent in there, but very, very quick.

Now this fast time base, it doesn't look like there's any dead spots in there, but let's wind the wick right out. and aha. Bingo There we go. We've captured them just like we got on the tectronics.

So the Agilant also has these dead time periods. let's see if it's the same. and I've got the curses set up here, and the period of that seems to be about 16.6 milliseconds or around about 65 Herz or thereabout. So not that exact round figure like we got on the tech.

so the ageline is certainly also got some waveform processing dead spots in there just like the tech did. and we're looking at a dead time there of about 230 micros total. Now, of course, here's the big test. What happens if we disconnect our input signal and the agilant goes into free running trigger mode just like the tech scope.

Well, let's try it. Here's our waveform update rates per second. Let's pull it out. Look, it's basically the same.

It is still very, very quick. It's still 340,000 uh waveform update rates per second. Totally different to the way this tectronic scope actually works. They're entirely different.

Beast The Agilant its waveform update rates per second. is basically the same regardless of whether or not you're triggering on a signal. But for some reason, the tectronics. if there's no trigger signal, it sits around, twiddles its thumbs and waits and has a timeout in there of yeah, you know that sort of like 50 millisecond, 60 millisecond kind of value.

And well, why? Well I asked Tectronics and they said, well, that's just the way Tectronic Scopes work. That's the way it's always been. So I've got another tectronic scope here. much older model.

it's a TDS 3000 Series 500 MHz got DPO Technology Once again, it's a pretty uh, fast updating rate scope for its G day and as you can see, I mean let's zoom into the wave form there and you can really see that's updating very quick. Unfortunately, this scope does not have a trigger out to readily measure the waveform update um rate. so we're going to have to just look at the waveform. Now, let me discon.

uh, disconnect the input and watch it ready. There it goes. You can see that it's dropping down to a almost certainly exactly the same rate like it does on the new Mdo 3000. Tectronics are continuing to operate this exactly the same way.

and I'm told that's how all their digital Scopes have always worked. And what about this? Riyal Ds200 series? Well, once again, exactly the same. 100 NS per division measuring this 2 MHz waveform. Uh, the lowest memory rate possible.

So let's go into the acquire menu sample mode. Memory depth is auto, but I can set it down to the absolute uh, minimum 14k points. but it makes absolutely no difference. And what update rate frequency do we get? Yes, this one has a trigger out so we're able to have a look at that and there we go.

About 232 khz. 23,000 waveform updates per second. Now exactly the same test. Again, what happens if I disconnect my input signal down here? let's have a look: 232 KZ Disconnected.

It's exactly the same. In fact, it's gone up a little bit to 24 khz. Oh, I Promise to show you how the trigger hold off can slow down the waveform update rates per second. I've probably showed you this before, but let's go in there.

Here we go: Trigger Hold off. It's down at 100 nond at the moment. For increase that I have to increase it a fair amount before it's going to become a percentage. But here it is.

Look at that. There we go. Our waveform update rate has dropped to basically the Uh trigger hold off value. So there we go.

That's 100 microc. Uh, hold off there and we're getting basically almost 10 khz there. So there you go. That's a way to slow down the waveform update rate of your oscilloscope if you need to.

Now I've also got this GW Inc GDs 200a series and it's A fast updating rate uh scope as well, a nominal uh maximum rate of about 880,000 waveform updates per second. It's got the V technology. it's got demo signal outputs here, and one of the demos can actually be set to the trigger output here. so I can select that so we can actually get the trigger output frequency, but it doesn't seem to be working so it's actually rather strange.

We're getting what uh, we would expect a trigger pulse out of the thing, but it's only at 100 Hertz 99.9 Hertz basically 100. We got the same 2 megaherz signal going in here. We know it's capable of 80,000 waveform updates per second. It certainly looks very fast uh as well.

but for some reason this trigger output is not giving us what we expect and the time per division makes no difference. If I increase that right up to 10 n seconds per division, then we expect it to be. You know, maximum waveform update rate? But it's not. It makes no difference whatsoever.

If we go down, then we then we can actually get this to change. So it seems to be doing that, but it's more like it's the display update instead of the actual waveform acquisition or something like that. Anyway, does it change if we take the Uh and turn off the input? No, it's exactly the same because I think it's just the display update rate. so the waveform updates per second, We can actually go in here and and have a look at that and really I can't see any difference.

I'll disconnect the signal and uh, the waveform update rate looks basically the same. It looks very quick with and without that signal. and of course I can adjust the trigger level up here and I can go out of that and I don't know, so it's hard to tell. but I get the impression that it's operating exactly the same as the Agant and the Rgo unit.

I.E It's going into a true free running uh trigger mode when there's no uh Trigger or no input signal. Now here's an interesting little aside: I Just discovered something really weird: I can't really explain what it's doing here. Uh, totally unrelated to this. but look.

I've got a 100 MHz triangle wave but it's spread. Spectrum Okay, so it's going to be jittery all over the place. Okay, so there it is. It's being triggered fine.

The trigger levels you know there and everything's hunky dory. F Acquisition mode is off now. watch what happens if I turn fast Acquisition mode on. Look at that.

It turns it into some bizarre sort of uh uh Point based like individual dots and then showing the difference in the dots. Now that's got to be intentional and of course you going change the waveform palet on that. There's the spectral response showing the different colors for the different Uh intensities. so that's really rather interesting.

I'm I'm not sure if I'm impressed by that or whether or not I'm I'm a little bit scared at how that's actually displaying that. it's got to be a feature. H So anyway, I've got fast acquisition mode turned off and there we go. Our waveform is updating, everything's hunky dory.

it's probably doing that 250,000 times per second. And let's take the trigger level up so it doesn't trickle any anymore. And there we go. We get that.

You know, like 19, 20 HZ update rate. It looks pretty awful, but you can actually see the waveform so that's You Could argue that's actually useful and that's different to how the agilant operates. Let me show you okay exact same signal on the agilant and adjust our trigger level up and Boom! Look at that. Free running.

You can't see that signal at all. But of course, if you press stop boom, we're straight in. You can see you instantly capture Run Stop Run stop. And that brings up another difference between these.

Scopes In terms of how they operate, let's take that trigger level up so it's not triggering at all and it's just free running. Although it's not true. Auto Update: uh triggering as the ageline is: press stop and you get all those multiple waveforms on the screen like that I Don't like that when I press stop I expect to see a single capture single waveform. Uh I Don't know, Agilant? Uh Tech must have their reason for doing that and then of course it fixes it as soon as you move the horizontal position or you change the scale like that and you're instantly replaying the memory.

It doesn't have that uh displayed value or that sort of you know that uh, persistence information that it's showing like it does when you just press stop. So how does the Ryol operate well in one way? Exactly like the Agilant? Let's take a look. Here's the level signal level. Boom stops.

Look at that. There we go. It goes into true free running mode. You can't see a way, but as soon as you press stop, it acts exactly like the Tectronics one.

So it's sort of like a blend of both modes. And once again, if you move the position or you move the uh time base, then you get the captured waveform. Eh, And how does the GW Instc operate well? let's try that. Let's take the trigger level up and it free runs like that, but it's not nearly as fast as uh, what it should be.

It claims 880,000 waveform updates per second, but I don't know. I'm sort of beginning to doubt this. It's really weird. it doesn't operate like all the other Scopes in that regard.

so I'm not sure what they're doing with the acquisition there and with the acquisition engine there and how they're claiming those 80,000 waveform updates per second. Need more investigation there anyway. If you stop that boom, it instantly operates like the Agilant one and displays your captured waveform single shot instead of the displayed waveform it had before. So there you go.

That just goes to show you a couple of operational differences: I Know this sort of LED astray from what this video kind of started at with just showing that little uh uh quirk in how the tectronics uh operates. But anyway, you know I like to Waffle on here and I find these things as I play with them and I like to show you some operational differences between Scopes and really, none of them are right or wrong. You could argue either way about how you actually prefer it and the pros and cons of both approaches. uh with these Scopes But anyway, they all certainly do operate uh differently or a combination of others, depending on how you want to look at it.

It's interesting. and here's another interesting waveform. Just another aspect of scope differences. I'm going to look at here: I've got a a kind of a complicated sort of uh, amplitude modulated pulse uh, waveform here.

let's have a look at it if it's got enough memory. Yeah, it's like a pulse wave form like that. Okay, oh, that's in, yeah, that's running. and then it's then it's amplitude modulated.

so it is really quite a complex wave for for a scope to trigger on. And it's also going to test memory depth as well. Now if we have a look at the tectronics, its memory depth at the moment is only set to 1,000 uh samples there. And of course you get you know it's just garbage.

You get all sorts of these artifacts because of the S because of the memory depth there. and if we increase that to 10K Oh, we're almost there. 100K We sort of start seeing the waveform and really, we've got to get to a Meg before we start seeing it like we've seen it on the agilant here. Although, it's still not as good and the waveform update rate isn't nearly as quick.

So in terms of uh, just being able to Simply drive your oscilloscope on a day-to-day basis I Much prefer the agilant where it's got no memory depth setting. It has no fast acquisition mode. it just, you know, optimizes everything for you and displays the waveform as best it can. It does the best job, but something like the tech here, you've actually got to.

You know how to use it and know what mode you're currently in, what memory depth you got it set to, and all that sort of stuff. Otherwise, you can get tricked into thinking that your waveforms something that it's not unless you go in there and start analyzing it. So we really need the Teex set to its deepest memory there. 5 or 10 Meg before we start getting sort of an equivalent waveform to the agant up here, but you're usually not going to operate the tech on a day-to-day basis at that kind of memory depth usually because it's so low.

Usually you want a fast updating scope and if we try and go into fast acquisition mode here, well, it a for some reason it jumps to 10 microc per division from 10 milliseconds per division for starters I'm not sure why it does that, but then we can certainly go up there back to our 10 milliseconds per division. but because in fast acquisition mode we don't have the memory, you can kind of sort of see its amplitude modulator. but n But here's where the fast acquisition mode is really really nice and the and the color grade different uh, palletes and color temperature gradient. you can get that you don't get on the agilant.

So let's Zoom right in for example. and let's have a look at uh, there we go. we're at Uh 200. Let's go to 200 nond per division.

Let's wind this one down to 200 nond as well. There we go. Look at that similar sort of the way the Aulin is updating really really fast. You can, oh geez, that could cause seizures or something like that.

Look, if we change our waveform pette here. this is, you know, really nice. You can see the spectral intensity of the waveform down here and this is really nice stuff. I Do like this look at that the color temperature so you can see that the red is more frequent in the center around there.

Really, really very nice. and you don't get that on the agilant, so that's one of the advantages. even that inverted mode is kind of Novel And how does the Ryol operate? Well, Once again, we're back to our 10 milliseconds per Division And and look at that. I Think that is just beautiful.

That is a gorgeous intensity graded display. and I've said it before and I've shown a video on this: I Think the Ryo has the best intensity graded monochrome display out there. that analog like just ah thing of beauty. so it operates just like the agant and then we can stop that and we can zoom right in because it's operating on that uh, deep memory.

If we go into uh, acquire there memory depth, it's Auto it's set to Auto there. so it's choosing that real deep memory and it's working really, really nicely. And at 200 NS per division? well, yeah, very, very similar to the agant. If you put them side by side, I'll try and get them in the same shot.

There we go. Yeah, very nice. The ryol and agant do operate very similar. The tech is is significantly different.

so on an everyday signal like this, uh SPI uh. line here for examp Example: they're both triggered like this if I take the agilant out of trigger like that yeah, there goes all the data and I can do the same thing for the tech and yeah, it's just that slower updating whether I don't know I I just prefer the agant really there. There might be some advantage to the slower updating rate of the text. so there could be method in their Madness there by not having a true Auto uh rolling function but each to their own.

So there you have it. That's an interesting little Quirk with Tectronics Digital Scopes that others on the market don't seem to have. Yeah, I haven't tried all of them on the market, but hey, these ones here. Good representative sample so it seems to be pretty unique to Tech I think if you know otherwise.

uh, please leave it in the comments now. Tech Have explained that the acquisition engine waveform capture and acquisition engine is D driven by the triggering system and that's exactly what we've seen. With no trigger, there's nothing uh for it to actually acquire and I guess Tech figure Well, if you're not triggering on a signal, what's the point of actually being able to see it? and well, okay, arguments are for and against that, but I personally find a little bit disconcerting. uh, watching that waveform update rate just Dro to bugger all.

And obviously if there's no trigger, then they give you a timeout because people expect that's how Cillos Scopes work. they expect Contin update rate on the screen so it's not like in normal mode. for example, you can put it in normal mode where it just won't update at all. but in that auto mode, you sort of expect it to be Auto you expect it to update all the time in in an ABS even with an absence of input uh or uh otherwise or any other trigger signal be it internal or external and that's what these other Scopes here do and but the tech doesn't, it's just different.

H So there you go. That's an interesting little tidbit. I Hope you like that, And if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Evev Vog Forum And yes, here's the new t-shirt warranty void if not removed. Beautiful.

Catch you next time.