re oscilloscope triggering in article c vs g ux murdoch acc virginia edu dgj y kelvin seas virginia edu david glen jacobowitz writes can someone out there explain exactly what the trigger feature found on oscilloscopes does lots og good explanation deleted lots more deleted is it just me or does anybody else out there not like digital scopes my school has some beauutful mhz hp that are digital with all the bells and whistles including soft keys which i think are a loveley touch that is software keys you don t forget that you are dealing with a computer those scopes even with all their neatness still make the ickyest looking waves lotsa features but ugly output and those are the best digitals i have ever seen i ve seen a lot of cheaper digitals and they look terrible i think the hangup with digital scopes is that you have to know so much more about them and how they work on a scope by scope basis and some of the functions are typically presented in my opinion in a counter intuitive fashion hp has made some strides in their series imo automatic setups are fine for simple repetitive waveforms but can give you some crazy results on more complex events where you need to understand how the scope is actually measuring processing the event for example is the scope in equivalent time or in real time sampling mode equivalent time being a mode where samples are built up slowly by adding a delay to the trigger event each sweep what was the scope s actual sampling rate at the time how is the data being massaged after capture but before display etc one common misconception is the speed of the scope is the hp scope you re using really a mhz scope or is it a mhz sample rate scope mhz single shot significance whose front end including s h can support mhz waveforms important for equivalent time sampling the mhz input in this case really only helps you when your waveform is repetitive or on a single sample when you get lucky and hit a transient event during a sample time so there are a lot more variables in understanding how to get useful information from a digital scope i prefer an analog scope for general use and the digital for events where i need storage for later analysis or comparison when the event is within the capability of the scope now for the price of true mhz digital scopes to fall dave medin phone w ssd networking h intergraph corp m s gd internet dtmedin catbyte b ingr com huntsville al uucp uunet ingr b catbyte dtmedin everywhere you look at least around my office the opinions expressed here are mine or those of my machine
