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Old July 19th 06, 07:26 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
Joel Kolstad Joel Kolstad is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 102
Default Newbie Question: PC Based Oscilloscopes

"AndyS" wrote in message
oups.com...
I MUCH MUCH MUCH prefer the old fashioned analog scopes, tho, since
I can fiddle with it and don't have to worry about aliasing, sample
rates, etc.


A *good* digitial scope will contain an anti-alias filter and sufficient
smarts that you genereally shouldn't have to worry about these issues -- if
you were to take a new Tektronix or Agilent DSO (or at least the "mid-grade"
or higher "trim levels" -- the ones that show properly shaded waveforms to
indicate how much time signals spend at various levels), I'm willing to bet
you'd be just as happy as with your old analog scope.

Not that there's anything wrong with the old analog scopes. :-)

One of the main problems with inexpensive PC-based oscilloscopes is the fact
that the specs are often considerably "low end" but often not presented in a
way that makes this apparent. I honestly believe that some people think
that hooking an analog signal directly to the input of, say, a 100Msps ADC
somehow makes a "100MHz scope." :-(

Here's a nice comparison from cleverscope -- people who do seem to know what
they're doing -- that compares various PC-based scopes:
http://www.cleverscope.com/resources...on%20chart.pdf

---Joel Kolstad