Hello Community,
My name is John Marrinan, and I'm your resistent expert on Oscilloscopes for the next few weeks. As an Field Application Engineer I see a huge range of uses for scopes in the modern world of technologoy and physics. If there are any questions you'd like to ask or comments on my posting I'd love to hear from you.
The other day, I received a request for information on digital scope fundamentals. A very nice gentleman, Ed, had just purchased his first digital oscilloscope and was looking for help in learning its basic operation. You see, Ed is an old-time Tektronix user. He lamented that he had two Tektronix scopes “that I like, but both are ancient. But, as you know, they go on forever…” He had an application that required him to capture his waveforms for analysis. That simple need had forced him to finally upgrade to a basic digital oscilloscope.
Admittedly, when I came out of college, digital scopes were pretty common. I'm old enough to say we did have analog scopes in our Uni, but I know there a lot of people out there that actually never used an analog scope. What strikes me, though, is since the introduction of the digital scope, the pace of innovation in oscilloscopes has been staggering. Just the other week, we (Tektronix) introduced our new TBS1000B oscilloscope platform. For $550, you get a basic 2-channel, 50-MHz oscilloscope with zoom, 34 automated measurements, datalogging, limit testing, and a host of other goodies. Just a few years ago, the basic scope we introduced had the same quality acquisition system but less than half the automated measurements and none of the features like datalogging and limit testing. The move to a digital-based platform has enabled our engineering team to continuously add features to make our scopes easier to use.
But enough about us. I’d like to hear about your favorite scope features and experiences with the changing world of oscilloscopes.
