Tektronix introduces scope family, 2 probes

Electronic News, Feb 26, 1996

Beaverton, Ore.--Tektronix announced a new family of lower-priced InstaVu acquisition oscilloscopes and two new oscilloscope probes.

The InstaVu includes the TDS 700A series and TDS 500B series of digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs), giving users both the confidence of an analog scope and the power of a digital scope at significantly lower prices. Tek's proprietary InstaVu signal acquisition technology lets users capture up to 400,000 waveforms per second (Wfm/s), making these new digital scopes as fast as the world's swiftest analog scopes.

The new TDS 700A series includes the TDS 784A, TDS 744A and TDS 724A. These feature color displays, bandwidths up to 1GHz, sample rates up to 4 gigasamples per second and acquisition rates up to 400,000 Wfm/s. The new TDS 500B series includes the four-channel TDS 540B and two-channel TDS 520B, both of which feature 500MHz bandwidth, up to two GS/s sample rate, monochrome displays and up to 100,000 Wfm/s acquisition rate.

"Many scope users have stayed with analog because they lack confidence in conventional DSOs' acquisition performance," said Rick Wills, VP and GM of Tektronix Instruments Business Unit. "Now, with our new InstaVu products, these customers can have the most powerful acquisition technology available--and at a price they can afford."

This acquisition technology is designed to quickly pinpoint and capture unpredictable, rapidly changing signals--infrequent glitches, metastable behavior and time jitter--that may never be detected by conventional analog or digital scopes or specialized triggering. InstaVu combines high-speed acquisition memory with high-speed display rasterization to increase acquisition performance and ensure instantaneous live display of all signal changes. For design and debug applications, it cuts debug time from hours to seconds.

The two new oscilloscope probes, touted as unrivaled in functionality and ease-of-use, are the P5205 high-voltage differential probe and the TCP202 ac/dc current probe and feature the intelligent TekProbe advanced scope interface, eliminating the need for an external power supply or control interface.

Combined with the new TDS 500B and TDS 700A DSOs, these new probes provide direct, correctly scaled measurement and display of differential voltage, current and instantaneous power in electronic circuits. The resultant waveform, whether it is displayed on the scope, printed out or stored on a disk, is annotated with the correct numerical value and unit of measure, such as V (volts), A (amperes) or W (watts).

The P5205 high-voltage differential probe makes floating voltage measurements. CAT II-rated, the probe has a 100MHz bandwidth and tip-to-tip differential voltage rating of 1,300V and plus-or-minus 1,000-volt rating from tip to ground. The probe's incorporated bandwidth-limit feature reduces noise and an audible overrange indicator activates when the input signal exceeds the linear range setting.

A key benefit of the P5205 is safety. When used with the new DSOs, it eliminates the common practice of floating a scope above ground, isolating the high-voltage signal reference relative to the earth ground reference of the scope.

The TCP202 ac/dc current probe offers what Tek claims to be the highest performance on the market, capable of measuring currents with frequencies from dc up to 50MHz. It will measure currents up to 15 amps to within 1 percent accuracy and a sensitivity of 10 mA. Current measurements are directly displayed on the screen with the correct annotation, eliminating the need for manual scale conversion.

The TDS 540B and TDS 520B have a U.S. base price of $14,950 and $9,500, respectively. The top-of-the-line TDS 784A scope has a U.S. base price of $34,495; the TDS 744A, $17,950 and the TDS 724A, $12,200. All products are available with six- to eight-week delivery.

The P5205 is U.S. base-priced at $895 and the TCP202 at $1,320. Both are available for order now with four-week delivery.