Don't buy the Tek TDS1002B. It's quite old and you'll hate the screen. The old mono LCD's had poor backlighting (uneven and grey) and the viewing angle is very narrow. It's also impossible to distinguish the waveforms of the two channels when they are close to each other. The Tek also doesn't perform as many automatic measurements as the newer scopes.
The Atten scope is a very cheap core with a fancy large screen that provides nothing but the illusion of superiority. Despite the large size of the screen, the vertical resolution of the waveforms is still only 8 bits like any other DSO. Making the picture larger just makes the waveform line look fatter and chunkier and that simply serves no purpose unless you need to see it from 12 feet away. The screen fonts are finer but some people find them harder to read than standard thick fonts. The biggest disadvantage of this scope is the incredibly shallow memory of only 40k samples as compared to the Rigol that has 1M sample depth. For a DSO, memory depth is a key feature and the Atten comes up very short.
The Rigol DS1102E is, in my opinion, a very good choice for a low cost economical yet high quality benchtop scope. I bought one a few months back and I enjoy using it on my bench often. While the screen size is the usual 4.5", it is color and it is very bright and it has an extremely wide viewing angle and that's a big advantage. The menu navigation is intuitive and fast. The Pass/Fail function is a feature that I often find very useful and is something that none of my previous scopes had. The Rigol has a lot of built in measurements, cursors, and an FFT function (a basic spectrum display). The Rigol also comes with the PC software and can run completely by remote control via PC. Tektronix charges an additional $800 for their software that does the same stuff. The front USB host socket can be used with thumbdrives to save/recall setups and waveforms. The rear USB device port is used to print to PictBridge printers and to connect to the PC control software. It also has a rear serial comm port that can be used to issue commands, connect to other devices, and to update its firmware. Some online reviews commented that the cooling fan was too loud but I've really never found that to be the case with my unit. As low cost DSO's go, the Rigol is one of my favorites and I highly recommend it.
An interesting story about the Rigol DS1102E (100MHz) and the DS1052E (50MHz) is that they are physically identical. In fact, the reason why the DS1102E is priced so low is that last year someone discovered how to flash the 1052 (50MHz) with 1102 firmware and thus instantly turn it into a genuine 100MHz scope. There is a video about this on youtube. Since so many people were buying the 1052 for half the price of the 1102 and then simply reflashing them at home, the 1102's simply stopped selling. All of the distributors had to drop the price of the 1102 to the same price as the 1052 in order to sell them. Some distributors also dropped the price of the 1052 by $50. As a result of this situation, the DS1102E became the lowest priced (but highest functionality) DSO in its class. Of course, once they are all sold out, you can be certain that Rigol will not make the same mistake with the next model and prices for this level of functionality will go back up to the $900 to $1100 range.
As low end DSO's go, none are ideal to display vector games in XY mode. As previously stated by others, you will be able to see an image but only really enough to tell whether or not the game is running. To display vector games properly, you need a high end DSO that also has "digital persistence" and a Z input. For this level of scope, you're looking at probably 200MHz as a minimum and around $2200 to start. Tektronix scopes starting in this range or higher would probably do the job adequately. Ironically, old analog scopes starting at 100MHz bandwidth that include a Z input will show a pretty good image.
About 10 years back, I bought a GW Instek DSO with a 7" mono-green CRT. It has no Z input. Despite the CRT display, it presented a pretty bad image when connected to a vector game in XY mode. The sampling rate was simply too low and it presented only dots, not vectors. There was in fact an image but not anything like you'd wish to see. Very few DSO's will connect the dots in XY mode as they do in the normal V-vs-T mode so bear that in mind.
William Boucher
http://www.biltronix.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Moore
To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: VECTOR: Use of digital oscopes when testing vector boards?
I use a sds6062v its great for looking at signals xy mode does suck.
On Jul 23, 2012 1:27 AM, "David Shoemaker" <davids@oz.net> wrote:
I have a couple of old analog scopes (A tenma and a tek). The Tenma controls are getting tired and they are both kind of big to lug around to the back of a game. I picked up a Fluke scope meter 105b but it appears to not have an XY mode L
I am thinking about getting one of the newer digital units (much more portable).
Things like:
Atten
Rigol
Or a used Tek:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tektronix-TDS-1002B-/300746471312?pt=BI_Oscilloscopes&hash=item4605e2f790
I borrowed a TDS220 to try and the display from a battle zone was chunky but you could tell that the board was running. Couldn’t really read the rom error numbers.
I don’t see any of these having a z channel which would make them more useful for vector testing (to blank the display when beam is moving from line to line).
The Atten and Rigol are both color models and they all appear to have the same 320x240 resolution.
Any recommendations? Or opinions?
Thanks,
David
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Received on Mon Jul 23 20:31:56 2012
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