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Product Tryout: Rigol Technologies mixed-signal oscilloscope (Part 2 of 3)
September 20, 2007
go to part 1 of this product tryout
Logic inputs
The DS1102CD’s 16 digital-logic inputs turn it into an MSO. To use the logic channels, you need the Active Logic Head, which is included and connects to the oscilloscope through a ribbon cable. You then have the option of connecting the logic head to your device under test (DUT) through a ribbon cable or through flying leads (16 inputs plus two grounds).
Pressing the run/stop button starts the instrument and lets you view channels D0 through D7. To view D8 through D15, you need to press the “LA” button to reach the logic-analyzer menu. Two soft keys lets you turn eight logic channel (D0-D7 or D8-D15) on or off. The descriptions are somewhat confusing, though. When you enable a set of eight channels, the soft-key menus says “Turn On.” To me, that means “press the key to turn the channels on” but here it means “channels are on.” Rigol should consider changing the text to display the current status by removing the word “Turn” from the menu, leaving just “ON and “OFF.”
I started with the instrument displaying logic channel D0 to D7. They consumed the entire height of the screen. Pressing the LA button enables the soft-key menu where you select channels D7-D0 or D15-D8. You can compress the display for those channels so you can see all of them. Unfortunately, enabling all channels caused the two sets of channel to overlay each other, rendering both impossible to see. Pressing the “reset” soft key shifted channel D15-D8 up, making all channels visible. You can also turn any channel on or off and you can press and arrow soft key that lets you see more soft-key choices. A “Current’ soft-key setting lets you select which channel to view in another color (red as opposed to yellow). Logic trigger options let you trigger on any analog or digital channel. In this case, I wanted to trigger on a short pulse in channel D5. It wasn’t difficult once I understood how to use the trigger button to select channel D5 for a high pulse of less than 6.8 ns.
Using the DS1102CD will take some practice. That’s the problem with all multifunction instruments. Once get comfortable with the instrument, you’ll be fine. I had two weeks between my first and second uses of this instrument and using it came easily the second time.
Continue to Part 3: PC software
Posted by Martin Rowe on September 20, 2007 | Comments (0)
