EDN — 05.23.96 PC plug-in DSO boards perform random repetitive sampling

Out in Front: May 23, 1996

PC plug-in DSO boards perform random repetitive sampling

The announcement by Gage Applied Sciences of its CompuScope 2125 ETS, a two-channel, ISA-bus digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) board that performs both real-time and random-repetitive sampling, brings attention to a technique that is common in benchtop DSOs but is almost unheard of in PC plug-in scope boards. For the last 18 months, Emulation Technology (ET) has offered three PC plug-in DSO boards that perform random sampling and can, therefore, provide a pretrigger view of repetitive waveforms.

Both the Gage and ET boards offer 8-bit resolution and include a separate ADC for each channel. Gage's board provides 125-MHz bandwidth and acquires 125M samples/sec in real time on two channels, 250M samples/sec in real time on a single channel, and 2G samples/sec in equivalent time on two channels. The standard memory is 256k samples; the maximum is 1M samples. The price with 256k-sample memory is $5495. ET's pricing begins at $994, and the company offers two- and four-channel units, but the boards are slower than Gage's and have less memory. Bandwidths are 20 and 40 MHz with a real-time sampling rate of 25M samples/sec/channel and 60 MHz with a real-time sampling rate of 40M samples/sec/channel. On all of ET's units, the memory depth is 32k samples/channel, and the maximum equivalent-time sampling rate is 1G sample/sec.

—by Dan Strassberg

Emulation Technology Inc, Santa Clara, CA. (408) 982-0660, fax (408) 982-0664, ET@pmail.emulation.com, http://www.emulation.com.

Gage Applied Sciences Inc, South Burlington, VT. (800) 567-4243, fax (514) 337-8411, prodinfo@gage-applied.com, http://www.gage-applied.com.