After posting about my old Telequipment D66 scope, I began looking around for a brand new, up-to-date oscilloscope for my DIY work. I decided on this Rigol DS1102Z-E. I chose it for price and features. This won’t be a review, because I’m ignorant of half the features this instrument offers.

• Two channels
• 100 MHz bandwidth
• Real-time sample rate up to 1 GSa/s
• Memory depth up to 24 Mpts
• Includes FREE software options (BND-MSO/DS1000Z) already built in – a $312 value
• Up to 30,000 wfms/s waveform capture rate
• Up to 60,000 frames hardware real-time waveform recording and playback functions
• Various trigger and bus decoding functions
• Various interfaces: USB Host and Device, LAN (LXI), AUX
• Compact size, light weight, easy to use
• 7 inch WVGA (800×480) TFT LCD, intensity graded color display

Impressions

It’s essentially a small computer with a signal amplification front end. In normal capture operation it samples the incoming signals, converting from analog voltage to digital memory. Then you can view images of what’s been captured, as well as many different kinds of measurements (frequency, period, peak-to-peak voltage, etc., including a great deal more). It offers fifteen trigger modes, compared to I think two on the old D66. I’ll stick to edge triggering for now.

One funny encounter was when I went to look for the focus control. The traces are fairly thick and I’m used to a sharp CRT scan image. Well, there’s no focus control, ha ha. If there’s a way to sharpen the trace, I haven’t found it yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

The controls are rather easy to understand and use, if you’re conversant with scope conventions. On each side of the display there are menus which change with context, with associated hot keys. Context changes are associated with menus that pop up with buttons in the horizontal, vertical, and trigger areas to the right of the display.

Some features are really a boon, such as being able to see the actual peak-to-peak voltage of a waveform being displayed. Looking at one of my modular VCO sine waves, it was gratifying to see the readout of 9.90 volts p-p (10 volts being the expected). Some things tripped me up. I was looking at a VCO/LFO and the display was not moving or triggering. Well it did show me the period as being 17 seconds. Oops, it was in LFO mode.

I was reminded of the difference between my Kaypro 4-84 Z80 CPM computer with 64K of memory and my current Mac Book Pro laptop. Like the Telequipment D66 scope, I could grasp the whole workings of the Kaypro, having access to the full schematic diagram, CP/M source code, etc.. With the Mac Book or this Rigol scope, the workings are hidden in layers of proprietary software that I cannot begin to fathom. That old D66 certainly has no menus!