USB DSO aka PC oscilloscope recomendations

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by scottandme

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgea...5faffd2f4673f6

I have a DS1074Z (DS1054Z wasn't out yet), and enjoy it. Both scopes can be turned into DS1104Z's quickly and easily, but I don't think it's exactly legal. Some have proposed that it's a intentional "oversight" by Rigol, but I haven't followed the situation that closely. AFAIK, the same possibility existed with the previous model line as well. Read into that as you will.

It's $400, but far more usable than anything else in the thread. "Buy once, cry once" might apply here if you can scrape up the money.

Not sure what isn't legal about it. It's your scope, you can do whatever the heck you want to it. You're not getting around any encryption or anything like that by doing it. Basically, what happened is Rigol decided they wanted 50 MHz scopes and 100 MHz scopes, but to make it cheaper, they all have the exact same hardware and they just limited it in software, and they were called out on it. People figured out how to modify the software to make the scope think it was the 100 MHz version, thus enabling the 100 MHz mode. FYI, I got the original DS1052E and modded it to be the DS1102.

And by modding the software, it was literally change the model number from DS1052E to DS1102E, and that magically changed everything. Now, when it comes to calibration, that may be the only issued. They were all calibrated as 50 MHz scopes, not 100 MHz.