On 5/23/2011 1:30 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 5/23/11 1:19 PM, Keith Monahan wrote:
I don't do much analog work, and as a result,
don't end up breaking out
my analog scope hardly at all.
You're not suggesting that analog oscilloscopes are somehow only
suitable for working on analog circuitry, are you? I'm sure it just
sounded that way
-Dave
I may have said that, but now that you mention it, this isn't at all
what I wanted to say. :)
Simply put, I find the storage capabilities of a DSO and the
capabilities of a logic analyzer to be more useful to the type of tasks
that I find myself working on.
Luckily, I haven't found any problems with signal quality or integrity,
in the digital circuits that I find myself creating/using. I normally
play it safe, don't use unreasonably fast speeds, long cables, do RF
designs, or create my own circuit boards (yet). I am often using
evaluation boards which have eliminated most of the real bad design
decisions that I could make. Or I'm probing circuits that have been
designed, tested, and so on --- where I've been able to rely on the fact
that the signal at the pin should be within tolerances.(if the device is
working as it should be)
While I'm by no means an expert in any of this stuff, when I work on
non-repeating signals, it's my limited understanding that an analog
scope does me little good --especially if it's a temporary condition,
and only happens intermittently. I'd much rather have some capability
to trigger and store the problem, so I can study it.
My understanding with the new Agilent DSO scopes I mentioned, is that
they have an update rate of 50,000 waveforms per second, which means
that you can now view glitches occurring in real time which would be
missed by other devices with much lower refresh rates.
Keith