Leading manufacturer of a large range of high performance digital oscilloscopes, LeCroy, has recently addressed the question of whether its equipment is susceptible to virus infection. The simple answer is yes!
The company has taken aggressive steps to ensure that all scopes leaving its manufacturing facility are virus free, as they operate off standard computer operating systems and appear on the network as a computer. Most are supplied with a full copy of Symantec Anti-Virus software. This is a 'no-charge' option and is installed if specified on the customer's order.
Product specialist at Spescom MeasureGraph, Roger Tipping, advises that enquiries should be made with your company's IT department before connecting a digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) to the network. "Find out what security policies apply to your scope. I also strongly recommend that customers keep their virus software on the DSO updated as you would normally do with any PC connected to either a network or the Internet."
DSOs operating on a network have numerous advantages over standalone units. These include the ability to link third-party software into the scope operations and to connect a wide variety of hardware to the scope.
The company offers a list of the 10 most common mistakes most people make when using a DSO.
1. Under-sampling the waveform as a wider time is attempted to be viewed with an oscilloscope too short of memory. LeCroy scopes are available either as standard or optional with large memory.
2. Not getting and reading all the oscilloscope application notes that address your project.
3. Not knowing and accounting for error sources in your measurement system. Percentage of errors introduced by each is accumulative.
4. Not using the scope's full power. An 8-bit measurement is about five times more accurate than an 'eyeball' approximation.
5. Taking only one measurement and believing 'the truth is known' instead of using persistence, histograms, statistics, FFT, etc, to let the scope show what is changing over time.
6. Believing you do not have time to learn how to master your oscilloscope.
7. Using a passive probe and trying to measure a high frequency or load sensitive circuit.
8. Looking at too small an area of time so the view of causes and effects are missed.
9. Squeezing four traces on a single grid and using the volts/div control to scale each waveform to a little less than 25% of full scale. This throws away 2 or more bits of resolution accuracy.
10. Not speaking with others in your organisation or team that use your model platform oscilloscope and getting their techniques, front panel set-ups, remote control software ideas, etc. An informal users group can be an incredible asset and could save a lot of time.
For more information contact Van Zyl Koegelenberg, Spescom MeasureGraph, 011 266 1572, [email protected]
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