Thank you for the replies; they're all very helpful.
First, sorry for my 1 sample/sec hiccup. I meant time/div set to 1s.
So yes, that takes 12s to draw, as expected.
But I want to look at what happens during e.g. a 10 minute cycle. When I set the time/div to 50s (D1052Z max), nothing happens... or at least, that's what I thought... there's just the beginning of the waveform in the screen's center, which does not move at all. So I give up and move on to faster divisions, missing out on all of the information. Patience, apparently, is not my biggest virtue.
I've just ran a test at 50s/div, and can confirm it works.
So perhaps my question should be : isn't there any other & better way to do this without waiting hours for a waveform to display ? "Hours" because sometimes I'm dealing with even slower cycles (20m), which can (and will!) differ over different cycles. Also, that would steal away valuable time to check on other, faster things...
I thought of logging slow data (how?), and then dump that to my Mac where I could study the passage of a waveform over a very long time (hours). But since an earlier update of Mac OS, the Rigol has turned out to be completely incompatible. I can't even update its firmware.
I don't know what "rolling mode" is. Sorry for my ignorance.
The reason why I tend to shun USB devices, is that I sometimes deal with PSU's too. From what I understand, USB devices are often not protected against, say 36V, even to the point where I'd risk frying my laptop. And more often than not, their software are poor ports of PC to Mac (again, Pico. Looks stunning in its specs, but their Mac implementation is beyond abysmal).
I've seen the Analog Discovery mentioned here a few times, and I checked it out. There was some reason I dismissed it, though I forgot which reason. I'll check it out again, thanks.
My laptop is an old 17" (!) MacBook Pro. USB2 only, and FireWire. It's big & clumsy, and would take up a lot of space on my smallish workbench. It was a powerful [costly] beast back in 2011; now it's completely outdated (and won't run newer Mac OSses). Would that suffice to run AD2 ?
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A friend (a real engineer) bought a lower-end Rohde recently, and I was amazed looking at its crisp touch display, its snappiness, and endless possibilities (though mostly over my head or beyond my needs). In comparison my Rigol looks & feels like Pong on an Atari 2600.
I dont' see Rohde mentioned often here ?
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So, is the conclusion then that *any* newer scope in the low $ range would satisfy my needs, or perhaps even that I don't need a new scope at all (and/or should look again at the USB options) ?
cheers,
_g