3 ms·

Tektronix instrumentation from this era (as well as HP/Agilent, and many of the military-affiliated labs) used pretty magical engineering tricks. In order to b

by blagie 1y ago

Tektronix instrumentation from this era (as well as HP/Agilent, and many of the military-affiliated labs) used pretty magical engineering tricks. In order to be able to design equipment, the instrumentation generally needs to outperform the equipment, sometimes by a significant margin. If I'm looking at the eye of a digital signal, I need to capture much faster than the signal. It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era. At some point, it will fade into obscurity. Right now, it's a whole different bag of tricks for the state-of-the-art. They feel less... more textbook and less clever. On the other hand, what's nice is that in 2025, decent equipment is cheap. There's a breakpoint where below around 100MHz, you can't do basic work, and above you can. That's roughly where FM pickup and a lot of oscillations sit. That used to cost a lot, but as technology progressed, we're at a point where a decent home lab can be had for well under a grand.

floxy 1y ago
>It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era. I think you'll get a kick out of: "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities" https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400/ https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...
mycatisblack 1y ago
In order to be able to design equipment, the instrumentation generally needs to outperform the equipment, sometimes by a significant margin. Flashback to my days as beginning TLP engineer. I was subjecting ESD protection structures to kV pulses with ~nanosec rise-time. The oscilloscope measures the pulse as it enters and reflects. You’d increase the voltage until the device breaks and do a wafer mapping. I remember a conversation where I showed the setup to a colleague from a diff department, telling him we’re developing next-gen protection against static discharges. To which he replies: why don’t we use what the guys from the oscilloscope are using?
scrlk 1y ago
> It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era. Though it isn't a book, the Hewlett-Packard Journal is a gold mine for this type of content: https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/hpjindex.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp... E.g. An 8-Gigasample-per-Second, 8-Bit Data Acquisition System for a Sampling Digital Oscilloscope (October 1993): https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1993-10.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp...
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burner420042 1y ago
Any recommendations for a sub-grand scope that a hobbyist will never be limited by?
- tverbeure 1y ago
  Never is too absolute of a statement, but I bought a Siglent SDS2304X 7 years ago. It has 350 MHz of bandwidth and a 2 Gsps sample rate. I don’t think I’ve ever been limited by what it can do. I paid the full price for it (>$2000), but almost all Rigol scopes have lower and higher BW versions with the same chassis and electronics. You can buy the lower BW versions for a fraction of the higher one and apply a software patch to unlock the higher BW. This has been possible for years. Despite many SW revisions, Rigol has never made an effort to block this. I think they know that in the grand scheme of things, they make more money this way. So research 100MHz Rigol scopes and check if they are hackable. Chances are high that they are.
  - nullc 1y ago
    on some of the latest models rigol put in a few hardware features that are only on the higher bandwidth versions, but the lower bandwidth are still hackable to higher bandwidth. It's all about extracting as much as they can from each customer, but I'm happy they're willing to allow "willing to do hacking stuff" to be a market segmenter for them. Unfortunately, I think the GP post question of a device a hobbyist can't exceed has a negative answer. I really like my DHO924S and there are a huge number of tasks where it is way more than enough (and it's very portable too). But around me there are kinds of computer and video and radio devices that run much higher than 250MHz, and going to 350 or 500MHz doesn't really change that fact. Scope prices go pretty exponential after a couple hundred MHz. ... so if you want to be snooping on a SFP+s sfi signal, USB3 some hdmi thing or whatever via a scope anything but a lucky surplus find is unlikely to be inside a hobby budget. Yet I think it's totally reasonable for a hobbyist to want to work on the high speed digital signals that surround them in their own home. (hobby solution to fast digital busses is to make custom boards with inexpensive FPGAs I guess, rather than using a 5+-figure oscilloscope)
    - 1y ago

by blagie 1y ago

floxy 1y ago

>It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era. I think you'll get a kick out of: "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities" https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400/ https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...

mycatisblack 1y ago

In order to be able to design equipment, the instrumentation generally needs to outperform the equipment, sometimes by a significant margin. Flashback to my days as beginning TLP engineer. I was subjecting ESD protection structures to kV pulses with ~nanosec rise-time. The oscilloscope measures the pulse as it enters and reflects. You’d increase the voltage until the device breaks and do a wafer mapping. I remember a conversation where I showed the setup to a colleague from a diff department, telling him we’re developing next-gen protection against static discharges. To which he replies: why don’t we use what the guys from the oscilloscope are using?

scrlk 1y ago

> It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era. Though it isn't a book, the Hewlett-Packard Journal is a gold mine for this type of content: https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/hpjindex.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp... E.g. An 8-Gigasample-per-Second, 8-Bit Data Acquisition System for a Sampling Digital Oscilloscope (October 1993): https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1993-10.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120526151653/http://www.hpl.hp...

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burner420042 1y ago

Any recommendations for a sub-grand scope that a hobbyist will never be limited by?

tverbeure 1y ago
Never is too absolute of a statement, but I bought a Siglent SDS2304X 7 years ago. It has 350 MHz of bandwidth and a 2 Gsps sample rate. I don’t think I’ve ever been limited by what it can do. I paid the full price for it (>$2000), but almost all Rigol scopes have lower and higher BW versions with the same chassis and electronics. You can buy the lower BW versions for a fraction of the higher one and apply a software patch to unlock the higher BW. This has been possible for years. Despite many SW revisions, Rigol has never made an effort to block this. I think they know that in the grand scheme of things, they make more money this way. So research 100MHz Rigol scopes and check if they are hackable. Chances are high that they are.
- nullc 1y ago
  on some of the latest models rigol put in a few hardware features that are only on the higher bandwidth versions, but the lower bandwidth are still hackable to higher bandwidth. It's all about extracting as much as they can from each customer, but I'm happy they're willing to allow "willing to do hacking stuff" to be a market segmenter for them. Unfortunately, I think the GP post question of a device a hobbyist can't exceed has a negative answer. I really like my DHO924S and there are a huge number of tasks where it is way more than enough (and it's very portable too). But around me there are kinds of computer and video and radio devices that run much higher than 250MHz, and going to 350 or 500MHz doesn't really change that fact. Scope prices go pretty exponential after a couple hundred MHz. ... so if you want to be snooping on a SFP+s sfi signal, USB3 some hdmi thing or whatever via a scope anything but a lucky surplus find is unlikely to be inside a hobby budget. Yet I think it's totally reasonable for a hobbyist to want to work on the high speed digital signals that surround them in their own home. (hobby solution to fast digital busses is to make custom boards with inexpensive FPGAs I guess, rather than using a 5+-figure oscilloscope)
  - 1y ago