I recently had the opportunity to put a Rigol DS1204B to the test.

I'm not going to do a review now, but rather I'll show some technical
measurements.

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal was
applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

I've also shown the response of an Agilent DSO5034 scope for comparison.

The Rigol is a 200 MHz, 4 channel digital scope. The attached image shows the
frequency response with a linear vertical characteristic. It's just the
envelope of the sweep, at 100 MHz per horizontal major division.

It can be seen that the scope might well be called a 300 MHz scope. The
response appears to be 3dB down around 330 MHz.

I set the scope to display the frequency of an applied single frequency sine
wave. The scope was able to synchronize to, and measure the frequency, up to a
limit of about 520 MHz.

I tested the rise time with an Agilent 10073C 500 MHz probe, and with an 800 pS
rise time test pulse, the scope plus probe had about a 1.25 nS rise time. To
make this measurement, the plastic spring loaded tip hook was removed and the
pulse applied directly to the tip and ground sheath.

I've attached an image showing the Agilent DSO5034 frequency response, with the
same 100 MHz per horizontal major division. This scope is 3 dB down around 400
MHz.

The power consumption of the Rigol is about 25 watts.

"The Phantom" wrote in message
...
I recently had the opportunity to put a Rigol DS1204B to the test.

I'm not going to do a review now, but rather I'll show some technical
measurements.

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal
was
applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

I've also shown the response of an Agilent DSO5034 scope for comparison.

Why do you have the Agilent set at 1V/div and the Rigol at 100mv?
And the timebase isn't the same either?
What am I missing?
Mike

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:26:49 -0600, "amdx" wrote:


"The Phantom" wrote in message
.. .
I recently had the opportunity to put a Rigol DS1204B to the test.

I'm not going to do a review now, but rather I'll show some technical
measurements.

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal
was
applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

I've also shown the response of an Agilent DSO5034 scope for comparison.

Why do you have the Agilent set at 1V/div and the Rigol at 100mv?
And the timebase isn't the same either?
What am I missing?
Mike

You've got it backwards; the Agilent shows 100 mV/div and the Rigol 1 V/div.

The signal was fed to the scopes without a probe; The last settings of the probe
scale factors were shown even though they have no effect on the display. The
Rigol had probably been used with a 10x probe, and the Agilent with a 1x probe.

The images were captured on different days, and the sweep speed of the scope
versus the speed of the generator must have been slightly different, but on both
occasions their relative values were adjusted to give 100 MHz per horizontal
division.

Could you post that online somewhere? Eternal September dropped it.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

"amdx" wrote in message
...

"The Phantom" wrote in message
...
I recently had the opportunity to put a Rigol DS1204B to the test.

I'm not going to do a review now, but rather I'll show some technical
measurements.

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal
was
applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

I've also shown the response of an Agilent DSO5034 scope for comparison.

Why do you have the Agilent set at 1V/div and the Rigol at 100mv?
And the timebase isn't the same either?
What am I missing?
Mike

Last year the budget was practically non-existent and we needed to buy a new
scope for setting up an encoder system. It had to measure A-quad-B sinewaves
in a lissajous pattern and also monitor a square wave from the index
detection.
I had considered a 4 channel scope (could have used 2ch+ trigger input but
really needed to see phasing of all signals directly) and mixed signal
scopes. All were way out of budget to buy. Long term lease was not an
option.

Wound up looking at some options through Saelig. Had considered some PC
based options but turned out that in the 40MHz range that we could work
with, the Rigol DS1042DS did exactly what we needed for less than 1
Kilobucks. Very nice that it can connect to a PC and/or thumb drive to
store/read settings and controls. Had it for a year now and only complaint
is that the menus are a little hard to follow.

I have to say that while I try to buy American, this was a good value.

Oppie

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:19:46 -0600, "Tim Williams"
wrote:

Could you post that online somewhere? Eternal September dropped it.

Tim

Here you go Tim.

http://i45.tinypic.com/14ahs0l.jpg

http://i47.tinypic.com/jt3nut.png

On Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:46:55 -0800, Fred Abse
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:08:01 -0600, The Phantom wrote:

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal
was applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

Most of the commercial 50 ohm through terminations I've measured are
pretty useless as low as 500MHz.

The one I used is behaving properly at 750 MHz. It came from Pasternack, and
their claim was: VSWR: 1.2:1 MAXIMUM, DC TO 1 GHz

On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:07:25 -0800, Fred Abse
wrote:

On Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:44:01 -0600, The Phantom wrote:

On Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:46:55 -0800, Fred Abse
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:08:01 -0600, The Phantom wrote:

I measured the frequency response with a 750 MHz sweep. The input signal
was applied with a short length of 50 ohm coax, with a 50 ohm feed through
termination at the input BNC connector; the scope probe was not used.

Most of the commercial 50 ohm through terminations I've measured are
pretty useless as low as 500MHz.

The one I used is behaving properly at 750 MHz. It came from Pasternack, and
their claim was: VSWR: 1.2:1 MAXIMUM, DC TO 1 GHz

How have you measured it? Network analyzer?

I wish. Nothing so fancy. I used an HP8657B signal generator, followed by a
sensitive military surplus SWR meter. Both instruments I use mostly for amateur
radio meaurements. The terminator SWR was less than 1.1:1 by this method.