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Learning to use an oscilloscope and an old floppy drive

opalko

Hi folks, as my previous posts indicate, I am new to this stuff.image I bought a Siglent SDS1202X-E when it was on sale and have been trying to teach myself the basics of it (probably not very well).

 

As it is, I have an old Atari 810 disk drive (Tandon) that is not working and one of the things I keep hearing is to test the drive speed.  The field service manual for the drive says:

Set Frequency Counter Controls to the following settings:

A. 10k Resolution or 1 Second Sample Time

B. X1 attenuation or Maximum sensitivity

C. X1 Probe (preferred)

When the frequency counter is properly adjusted, a 60.2 KHz reading should be seen on counter.


I guess the first question I should be asking is can I even use this scope to measure this?...

 

If I can, and I don't know if I am doing it correctly, I get what looks like varying frequency results without even adjusting the potentiometer that controls the drive speed.  When I hook everything up and hit "Measure", I get varying readings for the frequency as seen in screenshots below.  So,

  1. I am not doing something correctly with the scope (most likely) and/or
  2. I can't really use this scope to measure what needs to be measured (also likely) or
  3. the wild readings mean the potentiometer or something else is bad?

 

I will reiterate I am very new to this....

Thanks for any guidance on using this scope or repairing this drive...!

 

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Parents

  • Robert,

     

    Your setup is pretty close to correct.  You might need to raise the trigger voltage level up a bit (Yellow triangle on the far right side of the screen). The level is currently set at 11.6 volts (Edge CH1 box near the top of the right side of the screen).  As it sits right now, the trigger is near a glitch in the falling side of the waveform and maybe causing your noisy readings.  Ideally you would like the trigger level to be half between the maximum and minimum points of the waveform, but clear of any strange transitions in the signal.

     

    Good luck,

    Gene

Reply

  • Robert,

     

    Your setup is pretty close to correct.  You might need to raise the trigger voltage level up a bit (Yellow triangle on the far right side of the screen). The level is currently set at 11.6 volts (Edge CH1 box near the top of the right side of the screen).  As it sits right now, the trigger is near a glitch in the falling side of the waveform and maybe causing your noisy readings.  Ideally you would like the trigger level to be half between the maximum and minimum points of the waveform, but clear of any strange transitions in the signal.

     

    Good luck,

    Gene

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