Read this once before you sit down at the bench. It covers the instrument - what every control does and what every mark on the glass means. It does not cover the modules.
Sealed modules arrive on your bench with their labels half gone. Your job is to characterize each one and file a report, and the oscilloscope is the only way to find out what is happening inside.
You cannot open the modules. There are no lights, no sounds, no readouts on them - only numbered test pads. Everything you learn, you learn by putting a probe on a pad and setting the instrument up well enough to see what is there.
This manual explains the instrument, the same way the manual for any scope does. It will not tell you what a module is doing or how to coax a particular signal into view - working that out from what the screen shows you is the job. Everything you need is on the glass.
Every mark on the glass is telling you something. Learn these six and the instrument stops being mysterious.
TRIG'D means the sweep is locked and the picture is standing still - what you see is repeatable and safe to measure. AUTO means the instrument is drawing anyway because nothing crossed the trigger level; the trace will scatter and overlap itself. HELD means the last good capture is still on screen. NO PROBE means nothing is connected yet.
Do not take a measurement off an untriggered trace. It is not a picture of the signal so much as a pile of unrelated glimpses of it.
There is one skill underneath everything else here: count divisions, multiply by the scale. The graticule is ruled 10 across by 8 down, with minor ticks every fifth of a division along the centre lines.
Everything is on one face; nothing is hidden in a menu. Knobs turn three ways - drag up and down, roll the scroll wheel over them, or tab to one and use the arrow keys. Stepped knobs click between fixed positions. Switches cycle when you click the track.
| Control | Positions | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical — how tall the trace is | ||
| VOLTS/DIV | 5 mV – 10 V | Volts represented by one vertical division. It changes how much of the screen the signal uses, never the signal itself. |
| POSITION | ±4 div | Slides the trace up and down. The ground marker moves with it. |
| COUPLING | DC / AC / GND | DC shows the signal as it is. AC blocks the steady part and passes only what is changing. GND disconnects the input entirely and shows you where zero is. |
| PROBE | 1× / 10× | Tells the instrument what the probe divides the signal by. The readouts are only correct when this matches the probe you are actually using. |
| Horizontal — how much time is on screen | ||
| TIME/DIV | 20 ns – 500 ms | Time represented by one horizontal division. Ten divisions of it fit across the glass. |
| POSITION | ±4 div | Slides the trigger point left and right, so you can see further before or after it. |
| Trigger — whether the picture stands still | ||
| LEVEL | continuous | The voltage the signal has to cross for the sweep to start drawing. Its position is marked on the right edge of the glass. |
| SLOPE | RISE / FALL | Whether a crossing counts on the way up or on the way down. |
| MODE | AUTO / NORM / SGL | AUTO draws something even when nothing triggers. NORM draws only when the sweep actually triggers, and holds the last capture otherwise. SGL arms once, captures, and stops. |
| HOLDOFF | 40 ns – 10 ms | How long the sweep ignores further crossings after it has triggered. |
| RUN/STOP | latching | Freezes the display so you can measure a capture at leisure. Press again to resume. |
| SGL | momentary | Arms a single capture and stops as soon as it fires. |
The sweep only starts drawing when the signal crosses the level, in the direction SLOPE selects. If nothing ever crosses it, nothing ever starts a sweep at the same point twice - which is what an AUTO trace scattering across the screen is telling you. The level marker on the right edge shows exactly where the threshold sits relative to the trace.
The report card sits in the tray at the bottom right. Click it and it slides up over the panel; Esc or Close puts it away again. The instrument keeps running underneath, so you can open it, check a number, and close it without losing your setup.
Values are typed, not chosen from a list. Write them however is natural - the field understands engineering prefixes, so all of these mean the same thing:
0.08 - volts, no prefix.
80m - 80 millivolts.
80 mV - the unit is optional.
5k - 5 kilohertz. Note m is milli and M is mega.
Each field is checked against a tolerance band, not an exact figure - careful division-counting always lands inside it, and guessing rarely does. If a value is disputed, the field comes back circled in red with no explanation. That is deliberate: the circle tells you which measurement to go back and take again, and nothing more.
You can refile as many times as you like, and nothing is lost by getting it wrong. There is no timer and no way to fail.
Moving the probe to a different pad is the one action that is counted. Each module lists a par - the number of placements the job is expected to take - and the counter sits under the module well.
Going over par costs you nothing but the mark. It is there to encourage the habit that matters on a real bench: get everything you can out of one test point before you move to the next. Turning knobs, re-scaling, re-triggering and re-measuring at the pad you are already on are all free.
Two modules, reachable from the case buttons at the top right:
The full instrument is fitted for more than these two use: a second channel, cursors, persistence and probe attenuation are all present in the hardware and will be unlocked by later modules. The controls you can reach now are the ones these two jobs need, plus a few that are simply already on the panel.