Yeah there is no technical reason for that, probably marketing reasons, but for short pulses (low duty cycle) with the DG4000 use a square wave with 1 cycle burst.
Thanks for the tip - I've tried it and it works, and is much easier than setting up an arbitrary wave. What a great shame the mode actually intended for the purpose is so useless, though. I really don't think I should need to use workarounds like this when there's a button on the front panel marked 'Pulse'.
Well i have no problems with that on my DG4102...
See picture, of my DG4102, 1 khz puls of 2 pixels of 62 nSec wide.....
Made in arb mode, at 1 khz, 16000 points at 1khz, is pixel wide of 62 nSec...
Fair comment - but do you feel that a 62ns granularity is fit for purpose on a machine with a stated 500 MHz sample rate? I don't feel there's any valid reason whatsoever why these units shouldn't be able to offer 2ns granularity in the position of a data point. Nor is there any valid reason for needing to set up an arbitrary waveform just to 'get around' limits in the values that the UI will accept.
I agree that the lack of a proper pulse gen is annoying considering all teh hardware is there to implement it easily, but as usual, Chinese manufacturers lack the imagination to add stuff like this.
There's a button on the front panel with "Pulse" written on it. I don't think you can blame lack of imagination - just a lack of testing in real-world cases by engineers who might want to actually use the instrument.
This isn't the only mode that's broken BTW. Want to generate a PWM signal and vary it from 0% to 100%? You can't. A square wave, according to Rigol, has a duty cycle between 20% and 80%.
Andy, does the DG4062 do anything for you that the 3000X doesn't do? If the DG4062 went away is there anything you would miss, or could you meet all your function gen requirements with the 3000X? Is the tradeoff between the two completely a matter of specs, performance, and UI? Or is there some benefit you find in having an external function generator vs. the built-in generator? Or maybe the standalone function gen box just takes up bench space? Thx, EF
I bought the DG4062 first, so it's a bit of a moot point. When I later bought the 3000X, it seemed silly not to get the Wavegen feature enabled.
The 3000X only has one channel, of course, but otherwise both are theoretically capable of meeting my needs. I occasionally need both channels, though not too often.
I am conscious of the difference in cost between the two instruments though... there are circuits to which I'd much more happily connect a DG4062 than an MSO-X3054A. (Normally, of course, the scope has a 10:1 probe in the way to protect it, and its inputs are rated 300V rms anyway - but not its Wavegen output!)
If I managed to blow up the Rigol I'd be annoyed, whereas if I damaged the Agilent I'd be facing a repair bill well into four figures that I could do without.