Should I buy a Rigol MSO5000?

[2N3055]

Rigols seems to be convinced of having a functional hi-res mode….makes me nervous.

Yep it's scary a bit. Or they just wont admit publicly .. We'll see..

[nctnico]

LOL, talk about marketing..

R/S in HIRES mode drops to 300Ks/sec and shows undersampling. Rigol still samples at 2Gs/sec so shows signal properly.

No. It is the overdrive recovery which distorts the signal. Look carefully at the time/div. And the ADC samplerate doesn't drop on the R&S. On the RTM3004 the high res mode adds up to 6 bits extra and I assume this is the same on the RTB2000. To get 6 bits extra you need to oversample at least 4^6 =4096 times. The R&S keeps showing the resulting samplerate AFTER doing the oversampling needed to get the extra resolution. 1.25Gs/s / 4096=305ks/s

The use case shown in the video is a bit odd. One would use zoom mode to just look at the extra bits you get from high-res mode and not expand the signal. The whole point of having extra resolution is to be able to use the zoom mode to get more detail. The video goes from showing high-res mode to showing overdrive recovery but then fails to show how the high res mode on the MSO5000 is better compared to the RTB2000. It doesn't add up.

[Fungus]

Rigols seems to be convinced of having a functional hi-res mode….makes me nervous.

Any video like that is only made to hide something. 

Technically speaking: They're showing more real information with that color gradient thing, it shows the real signal and the surrounding noise. If you were a robot, that's what you'd want to see.

OTOH humans like to imagine that signals are perfect and want to see the ideal version of a signal, hence the popularity of hi-res mode.

[NoisyBoy]

I generally like the new Keysight test equipment as I grew up with the HP/Agilent/Keysight family, love the hardware and the support.

The concern I have with the old 54835A is not the hardware, but the fact that it runs on Windows 98, a 20+ years old OS GUI shell which in turn runs on top of DOS, a nearly 40 years old OS.  I worked closely with both MSFT/IBM OS development in my early career, and I can still remember all the hard work to develop Windows NT and OS/2 so we could move off DOS into a protected kernel based architecture and remove the memory limitation.  Win 98 had its place back in those days, but I would not touch either with a 10' pole now.

It was an easy way to slap a GUI on a scope 20 years ago, so I understand why Agilent chose it. But I would rather pick a scope without Windows in it if I were to go back to using vintage equipment.  Better yet, I would pay more to get a current Keysight if I were to stay with the Agilent/Keysight family. 

This is just a personal preference based on the behind-the-scene knowledge of Win 98, so I am not implying that everyone should do the same.  We should all pick the gear we are most comfortable with.

Having any passive probe on high frequency ruins everything.
The derating curves are nothing unusual, you can make it a little bit "better", but you can´t fight against the "nature" of a passive probe:

http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/manuals/pp006a_manual.pdf

the best "bang for buck" is a used LeCroy 1 or 2 GHz scope

If you need the Ghz bandwith, if you have enough space on your bench to place it onto, if you don´t have a problem with old crt-screens, if you generally don´t worry about the age, appx 20yrs, and the risks of something going defective after all these years, if you don´t need usb and network connections because you have 3.5" disks and diskdrive avaible or love to print the screenshot with the internal printer out or having a rs232 port on your pc, finally if you don´t worry about a few kpts of memory, than you should grab your 1000 bucks and go for a lecoy LC/DDA scope.

Lecroy isn't the only option. For $1000 you can pick up an Agilent 54835A which has a TFT screen, USB and ethernet. Hack it to become a 54845A and have 1GHz / 4Gs/s on 4 channels or 1.5GHz / 8Gs/s on 2 channels on a scope which is designed for high speed signal analysis. I have used this scope to resolve delays in the tens of ps range. The trigger on this oscilloscope is extremely stable.

And there are other options too like the Tektronix TDS700 series. A floppy to USB emulator can solve the problem of needing a disk drive.

Yep and it´s not alone, even the RTB series from R&S don´t have it too.

But the RTB2000 only goes to 200MHz. 500MHz bandwidth without real 50 Ohm inputs is madness.

[nctnico]

I generally like the new Keysight test equipment as I grew up with the HP/Agilent/Keysight family, love the hardware and the support.

The concern I have with the old 54835A is not the hardware, but the fact that it runs on Windows 98, a 20+ years old OS GUI shell which in turn runs on top of DOS, a nearly 40 years old OS.  I worked closely with both MSFT/IBM OS development in my early career, and I can still remember all the hard work to develop Windows NT and OS/2 so we could move off DOS into a protected kernel based architecture and remove the memory limitation.  Win 98 had its place back in those days, but I would not touch either with a 10' pole now.

This reasoning doesn't make any sense. It is an oscilloscope and Win98 is just the OS to make it go. The entire system has been build to work as a whole and it will work the same way today as it did when it got released. It is not like you'll use it to run MS Office 2019 or go browsing on internet.

20 years from now the Linux which drives most modern test equipment will be extremely outdated as well but that doesn't make the instrument any less useful.

[Fungus]

I generally like the new Keysight test equipment as I grew up with the HP/Agilent/Keysight family, love the hardware and the support.

I keep on hearing this but surely if it was any good it wouldn't need support. 

[newbrain]

...Windows 98, a 20+ years old OS GUI shell which in turn runs on top of DOS, a nearly 40 years old OS.

To put it very simply, this is false  , though I've heard it countless times.
W95, 98 and ME only used DOS as bootloader (and to run old incompatible programs that needed direct resource access).

Now, that memory protection was really rudimentary  is a topic for another day...

[dietert1]

If i were a maker of scopes with difficulties to fulfil buyers' expectations to get a bug free instrument, but i had to sell for income, my main concern would be how to get away with it.
Maybe i would give the buyer a free options packet, so whenever he wants to complain, i can reject his claims saying that the bad part of the firmware was a present.
And maybe i would invite him to do some bandwidth "hack" so i could reject even more claims, because i won't accept claims on hacked instruments.
And maybe i would offer my higher bandwidth instruments at salty prices to make sure nobody would buy them.

How does anyone expect Rigol to produce a serious multi-GSamples instrument for $ 1000, when everbody else needs to charge several times more? With their "innovative" methods they are just creating a lot of confusion.

Regards, Dieter

[TK]

How does anyone expect Rigol to produce a serious multi-GSamples instrument for $ 1000, when everbody else needs to charge several times more? With their "innovative" methods they are just creating a lot of confusion.

Regards, Dieter

The same way as Keysight is able to sell a serious full 2GSa/s (2 + 1 channels) for $350-$400?

[2N3055]

How does anyone expect Rigol to produce a serious multi-GSamples instrument for $ 1000, when everbody else needs to charge several times more? With their "innovative" methods they are just creating a lot of confusion.

Regards, Dieter

The same way as Keysight is able to sell a serious full 2GSa/s (2 + 1 channels) for $350-$400?

EDUX1002A 50 MHz, 2 Channel, 1 GSa/s, 100 kpts  ??

[TK]

How does anyone expect Rigol to produce a serious multi-GSamples instrument for $ 1000, when everbody else needs to charge several times more? With their "innovative" methods they are just creating a lot of confusion.

Regards, Dieter

The same way as Keysight is able to sell a serious full 2GSa/s (2 + 1 channels) for $350-$400?

EDUX1002A 50 MHz, 2 Channel, 1 GSa/s, 100 kpts  ??

Yes, but it is the same hardware (except for some missing ICs and passives costing no more than $10) as the DSOX1102G that can do 200MHz, 2GSa/s, 2 + 1 channels.  Talking about HW cost + R&D, it is all there and you can get it for around $400.

[Fungus]

EDUX1002A 50 MHz, 2 Channel, 1 GSa/s, 100 kpts  ??

Yes, but it is the same hardware (except for some missing ICs and passives costing no more than $10) as the DSOX1102G that can do 200MHz, 2GSa/s, 2 + 1 channels.  Talking about HW cost + R&D, it is all there and you can get it for around $400.

Can it be hacked?

[Noy]

If you have an asic which is much cheaper in high volume then you are trying to use it in many devices as possible...

[TK]

EDUX1002A 50 MHz, 2 Channel, 1 GSa/s, 100 kpts  ??

Yes, but it is the same hardware (except for some missing ICs and passives costing no more than $10) as the DSOX1102G that can do 200MHz, 2GSa/s, 2 + 1 channels.  Talking about HW cost + R&D, it is all there and you can get it for around $400.

Can it be hacked?

Yes.  EDUX to DSOX with full options.  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-978-keysight-1000x-hacking/525/

[Martin72]

So we talk about the good old ones, the good "A" brands vs "china crap", better to buy a used scope for the same price instead of a new one and so on.
And everyone is the same opinion (me too) for "serious" measures we need an expensive "A" brand scope..
Question is, where are the benchmarks for to judge over this is crap or not, in which measure situation you can separate the boys from the men…
For example, I got my private MSO5000 350Mhz still at work, as well we have a Waverunner LT with 350Mhz also - So I could directly compare.
Which measurings could expose the rigol as a cheap thing or the opposite as a surprisingly good unit ?
Which tests should be done to judge ?
We´re always talking only about...

[2N3055]

Problem is that Rigol does not deny warranty to software hacked equipment..
Good luck with a Keysight scope that you physically changed board, added/changed components and soldered on...

Also despite being very responsive, that scope is not so great. Even 4MS on my 3000T is barely usable...Saving  grace on 3000T is bunch of measurements, protocols and MSO that is very helpful. 1000 series has almost none of that... Also only 2 ch

Unless they are simply replacement for analog scope with same analog workflow, 1000 and 2000 from Keysight are crappy digital scopes.

Once MSO 5000 is debugged, it will be more like 3000t series with larger screen and much more memory. Much more..
So for general purpose mixed signal/microcontroller debugging much better. It will be directly comparable to R&S RTB2000 class, and not Keysight 1000/2000 series..
Though it might take some time for this to happen..

[nctnico]

So we talk about the good old ones, the good "A" brands vs "china crap", better to buy a used scope for the same price instead of a new one and so on.
And everyone is the same opinion (me too) for "serious" measures we need an expensive "A" brand scope..
Question is, where are the benchmarks for to judge over this is crap or not, in which measure situation you can separate the boys from the men…
For example, I got my private MSO5000 350Mhz still at work, as well we have a Waverunner LT with 350Mhz also - So I could directly compare.
Which measurings could expose the rigol as a cheap thing or the opposite as a surprisingly good unit ?
Which tests should be done to judge ?

Follow the tests I subjected the R&S RTM3004 to: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rohde-schwarz-rtm3000-review/msg1604185/
Note that doing all these tests takes several tens of hours!

[nctnico]

Once MSO 5000 is debugged, it will be more like 3000t series with larger screen and much more memory. Much more..
So for general purpose mixed signal/microcontroller debugging much better. It will be directly comparable to R&S RTB2000 class, and not Keysight 1000/2000 series..

If the RTB2000 is your reference level then you can also consider a GW Instek MSO2074A for $1600 (the price includes logic probe pods for 16 digital channels) and hack it to have the spectrum analysis and higher bandwidth. You have to think carefully whether a bigger screen and touch screen are really worth the extra money. Also the MSO2074A and RTB2004 work today and not in a few years from now (or never).

[dietert1]

The Rigol 5000 with it's 8 GSample/sec could be a nice 1 GHz 2-channel scope if it were prepared for using active probes.
If their ASIC supported  RIS sampling, it could even make a nice 2 GHz 4-channel sope.
But what people discuss here is buying a 70 MHz bandwidth crippled device. The recommendation to hack it to 350 MHz is strange from a professional point of view, because it voids warranty without getting anywhere close to what it should be. This is just asking for trouble, if you think about later firmware revisions. The term warranty has the connotation of not being granted as a present.

The difference between a LeCroy DSO and others becomes obvious as soon as you start stacking algorithms, like doing math on resolution enhanced traces or zoom into filtered traces or average FFT spectra. As far as i have seen from our DS2202E, Rigol software engineers don't (yet) have a clear concept on how to achieve that. For example the firmware knows very well how to determine the risetime of a logical signal, so it does determine the two logical levels. But when you start the I2C decoder, you have to setup the level by hand, and you have to do it twice, once for clock and once for data. What if you forgot to setup probe attenuation properly? It will probably break down. Maybe that's how i did not get any meaningful I2C result.

Regards, Dieter

[Martin72]

Also the MSO2074A and RTB2004 work today and not in a few years from now (or never).

Today, after several firmware updates…..and what means "working" in this case ?
The mso 5000 today works too.
It did it in Nov 2018 when it was launched and it do it now, after the FIRST firmware update.

Maybe that's how i did not get any meaningful I2C result.

Unfortunately, we don´t use I2C, otherwise I would test it on the mso5000.
The decoding on the mso5000 is way better(and stable) than on the ds1054z, we also have in our lab.
But access to I2C I don´t have at the moment.

The recommendation to hack it to 350 MHz is strange from a professional point of view, because it voids warranty without getting anywhere close to what it should be. This is just asking for trouble, if you think about later firmware revisions.

You´re right, but for private use it doesn´t matter.
Additional, the "hack" vanishes by the next firmware update, see the rigol 5000 hack thread.

[nctnico]

Also the MSO2074A and RTB2004 work today and not in a few years from now (or never).

Today, after several firmware updates…..and what means "working" in this case ?

Working without bugs ofcourse and deliver on specs  Please don't play dumb. Both scopes I mentioned worked way better when introduced and both manufacturers are way more responsive when it comes to fixing bugs compared to Rigol. In general GW Instek gives you a beta version within days or weeks and puts the fix in the next release, R&S has fixed release cycles with a clearly defined roadmap (just ask Rich from R&S). One point you may have is that the RTB2004 could do with more fixing when it was release but the first batch got sold for a ridiculously low price ($2k with full options IIRC).

[2N3055]

Also the MSO2074A and RTB2004 work today and not in a few years from now (or never).

Today, after several firmware updates…..and what means "working" in this case ?

Working without bugs ofcourse and deliver on specs  Please don't play dumb. Both scopes I mentioned worked way better when introduced and both manufacturers are way more responsive when it comes to fixing bugs compared to Rigol. In general GW Instek gives you a beta version within days or weeks and puts the fix in the next release, R&S has fixed release cycles with a clearly defined roadmap (just ask Rich from R&S). One point you may have is that the RTB2004 could do with more fixing when it was release but the first batch got sold for a ridiculously low price ($2k with full options IIRC).

Read and weep....Dozens of bugs with basic functions ...
It was officially released March 2017.

And from end of document excerpt:
-------------------------------------------------
1.4 Known Issues
The following tables list the known issues and indicate since which version the issue
could be observed:
Known issues of Firmware V02.202:
Since Issue
V02.101 Zoom window created with zoom tool: in rare cases the vertical zoom positon of the zoom
window is wrong.
V01.000 Trigger type timeout with "Stays High|Low" configured as range: with this setup some trigger events will be lost.

So bugs in triggering since release still not fixed...

I really like how "repaired defects" are named "improvements". Sleazy.

I actually give you that GW Instek is very good, much better in quality and price performance than RTB2000.

So yeah Rigol actually has LESS bugs on release..



 

[nimish]

I bought a MSO5074 + pod because at $1400 or so I could hack it to to an otherwise 2000/3000+ scope. I'm a hobbyist. I don't make money off of my equipment. I wanted something that is good enough to last until 5-10 pass and the tech is cheap enough that I can drop $500 to replace it, vs spending $3000 now and being sad in 5 years that a toaster could out-sample my scope.

If you rely on scopes for your $, then yes Keysight/Tek/RS/etc make sense, since you can use it as deductible R&D capex. No such luck for the hobbyist. You can't offer something 2x-3x as pricy as a "comparable" offering in an extremely price sensitive segment.

The MSO5074 + hack is a very good deal despite the nits that rule it out for businesses and "serious" uses. If my hobby takes off into a business, and the RoI makes it worth it, I'll look at upgrading. Until then I'll stick to the MSO5000 and its warts, which fra nkly as a new user to scopes aren't a big deal. I script most of my dealings with it anyway 

But until then, nctnico and his vendetta against hobbyists buying cheap scopes that offer extreme value for money will always baffle me.

[Martin72]

Both scopes I mentioned worked way better when introduced and both manufacturers are way more responsive when it comes to fixing bugs compared to Rigol.

Did you compare it ?

Do you have a mso 5000 and work with it to do such a statement ?

[nctnico]

Read and weep....Dozens of bugs with basic functions ...
It was officially released March 2017.

Dozens? Where? The known issues from the latest release notes only lists two:
https://scdn.rohde-schwarz.com/ur/pws/dl_downloads/dl_firmware/pdf_3/RTB2000_ReleaseNotes_v02.202.pdf