Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions Questions Related to Specific Gage Products Can't Find an Answer?

1. I want to be able to record the pulse width and rise time of my signal. I am not interested in the raw data. Can I do it without having to write my own software?
   
   
2. To get the order out quickly, my purchasing department has asked me for "sole source justification" for buying a CompuScope 14100C CompactPCI card from you. Can you help me?
   
   
3. Do you support Linux operating system? If so, which exact O/S have you tested your cards with? I am looking at using Real Time Linux operating system.
   
   
4. Can I use the same GageScope software for my CompactPCI CompuScope cards, as I do for my PCI bus CompuScopes?
   
   
5. Is CompactPCI a better bus for my test system than PCI? What advantages does it bring?
   
   
6. Can I buy a complete digitizing system from Gage, i.e. including a CompactPCI chassis? I do not find any reference to a chassis in your data sheets.
   
   
7. I do not currently own a CompuScope product, but would like to see what type of signal acquisition and analysis is possible using your products. Do you have a demo disk?
   
   
8. For an upcoming manufacturing test application, I will need to verify the width of an 11 nanosecond pulse in one of the tests and measure a 50 dB difference in between two signals at 44 MHz and 34 MHz.
   Since I will need a 1 ns time resolution on the pulse, I need a 1 GS/s acquisition card. Do I need a separate card for the dynamic range measurement?
   
   
9. I was just given the task of characterizing the fiber-optics we will be using. Which software shall I use to get the job done quickly.  The job requires collecting data from different points in the topology, analyzing them using MATLAB routines and including them in a final report.
   
   
10. I am interested in acquiring DSL signals with very deep acquisition memory. I do not want to integrate the cards myself. Can you supply a complete solution?
    
    
11. What is Bus Mastering?
    
    
12. I have noticed that Gage supports an extensive range of software drivers for your CompuScope cards. Do any of your drivers run under protected mode DOS?
    
    
13. Can I download GageScope software from the Web free of charge?
    
    
14. Can I use the latest version of GageScope with the CompuScope LITE card that I purchased in 1993?
    
    
15. I am using GageScope in a remote location. In the event of a power failure I want GageScope to restart, get past the first prompt, load a setup file and start executing in the AutoSave mode-but the previously created AutoSave files must not be overwritten by GageScope when it restarts. How can this be accomplished?
    
    
16. I want to trigger and capture a complete data set but only need to transfer 50 data points, which lie many points away from the trigger point. Do I have to transfer the whole card's memory, or do I have random access to the CompuScope card's buffer to transfer only the 50 points I need?
    
    
17. How fast can I transfer data from my CompuScope card's on-board memory to PC memory over the PCI bus?
    
    
18. I would like to sample two 40 MHz signals using a 200 MHz external clock, synchronized to a 10 MHz standard. What product can I use? The sampling has to be taken at a very specific time and duration: 10 bursts of 8 Ksamples for 10 periods of time (each burst spaced by 1 ms and each period being 500 ms) using multiple recording. I was planning to use external clock input only and feed it with the number of cycles required to take the samples. Everything has to be synchronized with a 10 MHz rubidium standard. Could the clock signal be used that way or does it have to be continually on?
    
    
19. Where can I get a copy of hardware or software manuals?
    
    
20. What is a CompuScope card with additional memory?
    
    
21. Why would anyone need additional on-board memory?
    
    
22. Is it possible to increase the record length for a CompuScope card without having to buy an additional memory CompuScope?
    
    
23. How would one order a CompuScope with additional memory?
    
    
24. What is a Multi-Card CompuScope system?
    
    
25. How do I order a Multi-Card system?
    
    
26. I have an application for very high speed data acquisition. I have a radar pulse about 500 nanoseconds wide, repeating 1000 times a second. I would like to be able to capture a few thousand of these pulses and store them in PC's memory. Is that possible with any of your CompuScope cards?
    
    
27. Are there ways to optimize the use of the on-board memory of the CompuScope card so that I can acquire more of the data that I'm actually interested in?
    
    
28. Can I install CompuScope cards of different types and/or memory sizes in the same PC?
    
    
29. Is there a programmable trigger delay on the CompuScope 250 (or other CompuScope cards)?

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1. We need to synchronize a high-resolution digitizer with the rest of the ultrasonic test system. For this, we need the CompuScope 14100 to generate a Trigger Output signal. Is this possible?
   
   
2. I am looking at buying a CompuScope 1602 card with External Clock upgrade. I noticed that there are five connectors on the front panel of the CS1602: 2 for Channel A, 2 for Channel B and one for External Trigger input. Where will I inject my External Clock signal, since all five connectors seem to be taken up?
   
   
3. I recently purchased a CompuScope 1450 digitizer and noticed that the analog bandwidth far exceeds the 25 MHz specification. Is this normal? Can it cause a problem?
   
   
4. What is the maximum number of trigger sources possible with a CompuScope 1610C Master Slave system for the CompactPCI bus?
   
   
5. I need to digitize a quadrature (I-Q) input using a fast digitizer at a preferred sample rate of 500 MS/s to 1 GS/s. I used a CompuScope 82G with C++ SDK and found that I get different data transfer rates when I use single channel mode versus dual channel mode. Is this normal?
   
   
6. I notice that CompuScope 82G has a 400 MHz bandwidth. Is it true for all input ranges?
   
   
7. I have a requirement to add a counter/timer card to the CompactPCI chassis that houses my CompuScope 1610C. The problem is that the counter/timer card only comes in 3U form factor and my chassis is 6U. What should I do?
   
   
8. What do I have to order if I want a 16 channel, 16 bit, 10 MS/s CompactPCI waveform digitizer system? For PCI cards, I used to have to order Master and Slave upgrades, but I don't see them on your data sheet for CompuScope 1610C.
   
   
9. What is the maximum pulse repeat frequency (PRF) I can expect from CompuScope 82G?
   My radar application cannot live with the slow transfer rates of traditional oscilloscopes.
   
   
10. I want to build a test system to validate the specifications of the A/D chips we use in our broadband system. 
    I noticed your CompuScope 3200. It will be fine for capturing digital data from the A/D chips. Do you supply software for evaluating this data to give me SNR, SINAD, SFDR, IMD etc.?
    
    
11. My wireless communication test application requires a very stable (10 ppm) clock for the CompuScope 14100. 
    Your specification sheet lists the accuracy of the internal clock to be +/- 200 ppm. Is this the same as stability? 
    I have also seen some of your competitors list their clock stability as 2 ppm. What is going on?
    
    
12. We have been using the HP5465 digital scopes for manufacturing test. While the price is right, the sampling speed of this DSO is becoming a limitation for us.  
    Can I use your new CompuScope 85G instead? How much work is it to switch?
    
    
13. I just installed GageScope software and read the manual. I understand that you have decoupled timebase from the sample rate setting in order to give the user more control over the instrument.  However, I like the coupling of the two controls since that means I only have to change one parameter to make the measurement, instead of having to change two. What should I do?
    
    
14. I have an imaging application in which I would like to use my own clock signal to digitize the analog signal from the camera using CompuScope 1602 in order to obtain 16 bit resolution.
    I have read in the hardware manual that this digitizer card uses "on-chip decimation". How does this affect me?
    
    
15. I was going to purchase a CompuScope 12100 because I need 100 MS/s sampling with 12 bit resolution, but I also need sample rates as low as 100 KS/s.  Since CS12100 does not allow me to sample slower than 5 MS/s, how do I solve my problem?
    
    
16. I am purchasing a 2 board CompuScope 82G Master/Slave system. Can I place the cards in adjacent PCI slots? Does that leave enough room for cooling?
    
    
17. What is the sub-channel feature of GageScope and how can it help me analyze signals more efficiently?
    
    
18. I am thinking about using six CompuScope 1012 A/D cards in a master / slave configuration to achieve 12 channels at 5 MSPS. Each board will have a total of 2 Meg of on-board memory. Can this configuration run alright? Can it run in a Pentium Based system? Can it run using LabVIEW? Can it run under Windows NT?
    
    
19. We would like to have a 4 channel, 20 MSPS acquisition system using two CompuScope 220 Cards. The system must trigger on any one of the four channels, as the error pulse can arrive on any of these channels. Is it possible?
    
    
20. Is a Visual Basic driver available for the CompuScope 220?
    
    
21. I am planning to use a CompuScope 250 in an ultra-sonic application that requires very high time resolution. I want to have a pulse source that fires synchronously with the A/D clock on the Gage board. Can you recommend a way to achieve this? Is there a point at which I can extract a clock signal from the board that is synchronous with the sampling time?
    
    
22. Do you have plans for a CompuScope 2125 with more than 1 Meg of Memory? Our requirement calls for at least 5MB on- board memory.
    
    
23. I would like to use the CompuScope 250 under GageScope, average 20 acquisitions and then do an FFT of the averaged result. Is this possible?
    
    
24. What is the maximum number of trigger sources possible with a CompuScope 8012 Multi-Card System?

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