Digital Storage Oscilloscope Adaptor Mk1

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DSOA Mk1 - Digital Storage Oscilloscope Adapter

The Original Mk1 DSOA.

Screen shot of the DOS software

The DSOA saga started back in Feb 1993, when my original DSOA Mk1 was published in Electronics Australia. This simple design proved to be extremely popular with many thousands of kits being sold!

I originally designed this project back in the 1980's

The Mk1 article was republished in Test Gear Vol 3, and also in the Hong Kong Electronics magazine in Chinese !

You can read the original Mk1 article here : DSOA Mk1 Article

You can also read the accompaning description of how a Half Flash ADC works : Half Flash

Then came the Rev2 DSOA software and hardware mod that added real time screen updating capability like a real CRO. Version 2 of the software was written to take advantage of this.

Then in EA May/Jun/Jul of 1994, Jim Rowe designed the DSOA Mk2 that included a calibrated timebase and attenuator, but with backward compatibility with my existing software. I had no input or knowledge of this hardware design, it was entirely Jim Rowe's. This effectively shelved plans for my own Mk2 unit that was under development at the time. I wrote the Version 3 software in a weekend that just made the front cover of the May 1994 edition of EA. The v3 software used page swapping to provide flicker free screen updating at over 40 times a second !. In the end, the Mk2 unit proved to be even more popular than the Mk1.

The current DSOA Mk2 software is v3.3a and supports both the Mk1 and Mk2 units. It is now available from here for FREE (for personal use). Here it: dsoa33a.zip

Since then I've been working on several designs for a Mk3 version, but every time I get close to completion, I think of a better way to do it, and start again from stratch.

I finally finished the Mk3 to my satisfaction in Aug 1997, and was just published in Oct/Nov 98.

View a picture of the Original DSOA Mk1.

View a screen shot of my DSOA Mk2 Software.

View the Schematic of my original DSOA Mk1.

UPDATE 15/12/02

Warren Stutt from New Zealand has done a very nice job of porting the DSOA Mk2 software over to Borland Pascal 7, and has added a few extra features. Warren has kindly offered to make the program and source code available for download here DSOA33b.ZIP.

I have not tested this myself as yet so can't offer support, so please email bug reports etc to Warren.

Check out my regular Electronics Engineering Video Blog

Here I am talking about Digital Storage Oscilloscope Basics:

and this one comparing PC Based oscilloscopes:

Various Old Mk3 Prototypes

View a recent DSOA single PCB prototype.

View my most recent DSOA Mk3.

View a modular PCB version, one board for analog the other for digital.

View another modular digital PCB. This PCB routed out to perfection, one of my favourite routes.

View a PLD based digital board, with a few mod wires!

View the DSOA Mk1 article in Chinese!