In this episode Shahriar explores the subtle difference between the Agilent 34420A & Keithley 2182A Nanovoltmeters. This difference caused three wasted hours of debugging which was not necessary.

The block diagram of the Keithley 2182A reveals the crucial difference between how the Channel 1 & Channel 2 of the instrument are treated. Unlike the Agilent 34420A, the two channels of the Keithley instrument are not fully independent. Channel 2 requires a shared reference to the LO terminal of Channel 1 otherwise the results will be erroneous. This key point is in fact mentioned in the manual. Therefore, RTFM!

If you find to buy high quality, low EMF cables for these instrument reach out to Harwell Prevision Electrical:

https://www.harwellusa.com/

Also, a big shoutout to team Borgentorskarna at Stockholm University! I wish you a great competition and a fun social science program.

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In this episode Shahriar reviews the recently announced Tektronix (DPO718AX) Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope. With up to 125GS/s sampling rate, 25GHz bandwidth per channel & deep memory, the new Tektronix platform should make for some interesting teardown & experiments:

https://www.tek.com/en/products/oscilloscopes/7-series-dpo

This comprehensive review is organized as follows:

00:00:00 – Introductions & review outline
00:01:08 – Oscilloscope overview, interfaces & specifications
00:08:03 – Detailed teardown, architecture overview, chipsets, backplane, sub-systems
00:36:03 – FastFrame performance, deep-memory, pulse-capture, orthogonal averaging
00:46:53 – SignalVu, 10Gbe SFP+ interface, constellation demodulation, noise & dynamic range
01:00:51 – TekConnect, differential skew calibration capability
01:02:18 – QuietChannel modes, serial data analysis, SIM platform, eye diagrams & jitter
01:15:26 – Concluding remarks

Please consider supporting The Signal Path:
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Other links:
https://www.TheSignalPath.com
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