Tek oscilloscopes catch analog and digital signals

-- Test & Measurement World, 4/3/2007 10:48:00 AM

Intended for engineers who design mixed-signal and FPGA-based systems, the new MSO4000 series of small-footprint oscilloscopes from Tektronix function much like the company's DPO4000 models but with an additional 16 logic channels. The MSO4000 line also features the company's Wave Inspector technology.

The MSO4000 consists of four models with two or four analog channels (see table). All models have 10 Msamples of waveform memory on all analog and digital channels. The digital channels have a time resolution of 60.6 ps, which corresponds to 16.5 Gsamples/s. You can attain that resolution when you turn on the MagniVu high-resolution signal-acquisition technology, which acquires 10,000 samples centered on the trigger point. Otherwise, you get 500 Msamples/s across the entire 10-Msample memory.

The logic probes consist of two 8-channel pods that plug into the oscilloscope’s front panel through one connector. You enable digital channels with a button just above the logic-probe connector. Because the connector is on the front, all of the probe’s cable is available for use. With two groups of eight digital channels, the DSO4000 lets you split channels to opposite sides of a board under test.

When you view logic signals, the MSO4000 displays logic high levels in green and logic low levels in blue. You can set the high and low voltage levels, above and below which the oscilloscope will use the color codes. It also lets you group logic signals together and display them as either binary or hexadecimal codes. You can configure up to four groups of parallel channels displayed as one code.

When you work on an embedded design, you often have serial or parallel buses the need triggers and decoding. The MSO4000 series supports triggering on I²C, SPI, CAN, and RS-232 buses. Tektronix, www.tektronix.com.