Storage Oscilloscopes, what do i use them for

Does the Hold off knob on the oscilloscope adjust the beginning trigger point?

At work they have a digital storage oscilloscope

I'm not sure what they are used for as in , what kind of measurements you would make from having waveform stored

I press auto trigger so the oscilloscope runs in real time, and then I hit the single trigger and I guess it snap shots the waveform?

I'm not sure where to adjust how long the snap shot is to take, I don't think this oscilloscope has a setting where u can adjust how long of the time cycles you want , it seems to be a FIXED setting

At work they want me to scroll through the digital signals to check for
1.) glitches
2.) Pulse Width
3.) Time Intervals

What else can I check for?

How do you guys use a Storage oscilloscope and what u use it for?

The hold-off control adjusts how long the delay is AFTER triggering before the trigger is re-armed again. It's useful sometimes to prevent some parts of a signal overwriting others by starting another sweep.

The 'Digital' in 'Digital Storage Oscilloscope' just refers to how the scope holds the waveform so it stays on the screen. Older scopes used a different method which actually prevented the display from fading, the digital method captures voltage samples of the waveform and continuously reads them back to refresh the screen.

The main advantage of DSOs is that by selecting the optimal sampling rate, start point and end points in storage memory, it is possible to zoom in to any part of the waveform and freeze it on the display while measurements are taken from it. On a non-storage scope, once the trace has been displayed, it clears and a new one is produced.

The trigger button lets you select how the trigger is used. In single sweep mode, once the trace has been displayed, it waits for you to re-arm it manually, in auto mode it waits for the 'hold off' period then re-arms itself so you get a continually updating display.

I'm not sure what you mean by how long the snap shot is. The timebase setting decides how long the waveform is captured for and in a storage system, it will display forever until you ask it do take another measurement.

You missed that you can also measure amplitude!

Brian.

How do you see the Pulse train signal Before the start triggering?

How do you set how long the waveform is sampled? so it will display the waveform longer than the oscilloscope view monitor? I just don't know how to set up the timeline of how long I want it to sample to waveform for

Which button does that?

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How do you see the Pulse train signal Before the start triggering?

How do you set how long the waveform is sampled? so it will display the waveform longer than the oscilloscope view monitor? I just don't know how to set up the timeline of how long I want it to sample to waveform for

Which button does that?

On a DSO, the waveform is always being digitized, the trigger circuit looks for a specific condition to start showing the samples on the screen. To see what happened before the trigger event, it looks back through it's memory to see the waveform it had already stored before the trigger happened. For example, if the memory held 1,000 samples and the trigger event was at sample 750, it might show you a window from sample 500 to 1,000 with the trigger point in the middle. That would let you see just before and after the trigger event.

How long it is sampled depends on how much storage memory there is inside the scope and how fast you take the samples. If you sample faster the memory gets filled up quicker. The rate at which you take samples and display them is usually set by the timebase (X sweep) control. The setting is a compromise between how many samples you take in given period to get the resolution you need and for how long it can keep taking samples before the memory is filled up. If you sample at a higher rate than you read the samples back, you see a stretched signal which is often useful to 'zoom in' on part of the waveform.

Brian.