Tektronix MSO5204
2 GHz, 10/5 GS/s (2/4 channels), 12.5M Record Length,
4 + 16 Ch, Mixed Signal Oscilloscope
Discontinued

Feature-rich Tools for Debugging Mixed Signal Designs

With the Tektronix MSO5204 2 GHz, 10/5 GS/s (2/4 channels), 12.5M Record Length, 4 + 16 Channels, Mixed Signal Oscilloscope, you can analyze up to 20 analog and digital signals with a single instrument to quickly find and diagnose problems in complex designs. Bandwidths up to 2 GHz and sample rates up to 10 GS/s ensure you have the performance you need to see fast-changing signal details. To capture long windows of signal activity while maintaining fine timing resolution, the Tektronix MSO/5204 offers a deep record length of up to 12.5M points standard on all channels and an optional record length of up to 250M points on two channels.

With Wave Inspector controls for rapid waveform navigation, and more than 10 optional software and analysis packages for common technologies and in-depth analysis tasks, the MSO5204 from Tektronix provides the feature-rich tools you need to simplify and speed debug of your complex design.

Comprehensive Features Speed Every Stage of Debug

The Tektronix MSO-5204 offers a robust set of features to speed every stage of debugging your design – from quickly discovering an anomaly and capturing it, to searching your waveform record for the event and analyzing its characteristics and your device's behavior.

Fast waveform capture rate - over 50,000 wfm/s - maximizes the probability of capturing elusive glitches and other infrequent events.

Discover
To debug a design problem, first you must know it exists. Every design engineer spends time looking for problems in their design, a time-consuming and frustrating task without the right debug tools.

The Tektronix MSO/5204 offers the industry's most complete visualization of signals, providing fast insight into the real operation of your device. Tektronix proprietary FastAcq technology delivers a fast waveform capture – greater than 250,000 waveforms per second – that enables you to see glitches and other infrequent transients within seconds, revealing the true nature of device faults. A digital phosphor display with color intensity grading shows the history of a signal's activity by using color to identify areas of the signal that occur more frequently, providing a visual display of just how often anomalies occur.

Triggering on a specific transmit data packet going across an RS-232 bus.

Capture
Discovering a device fault is only the first step. Next, you must capture the event of interest to identify root cause.

Accurately capturing any signal of interest begins with proper probing. The Tektronix MSO 5104 includes four high-impedance low-capacitance probes for accurate signal capture. These industry-first high-impedance passive voltage probes have less than 4 pF of capacitive loading to minimize the effect of the probe on your circuit's operation, offering the performance of an active probe with the flexibility of a passive probe.

The Tek MSO5204 provides a complete set of triggers – including runt, glitch, width, timeout, transition, pattern, state, setup/hold violation, serial packet, and parallel data – to help quickly find your event. Enhanced Triggering reduces trigger jitter at the trigger point. In this mode, the trigger point can be used as a measurement reference.

With up to a 250M point record length, you can capture many events of interest, even thousands of serial packets, in a single acquisition for further analysis while maintaining high resolution to zoom in on fine signal details. Investigate multiple segments of your waveform capture simultaneously with MultiView Zoom to quickly compare events in real time. FastFrame Segmented Memory mode enables you to make efficient use of large records by capturing many trigger events in a single record eliminating large time gaps between events of interest. View and measure the segments individually or as an overlay.

From triggering on specific packet content to automatic decode in multiple data formats, the Tektronix MSO5204 provides integrated support for a broad range of serial buses – I2C, SPI, RS-232/422/485/UART, and USB. The ability to decode up to 16 serial and/or parallel buses simultaneously means you gain insight into system-level problems quickly.

To further help troubleshoot system-level interactions in complex embedded systems, the Tektronix MSO5204 offers 16 digital channels in addition to its analog channels. Since the digital channels are fully integrated into the oscilloscope, you can trigger across all input channels, automatically time correlating all analog, digital, and serial signals. The MagniVu high-speed acquisition enables you to acquire fine signal detail (up to 60.6 ps resolution) around the trigger point for precision measurements. MagniVu is essential for making accurate timing measurements for setup and hold, clock delay, signal skew, and glitch characterization.

Results of an advanced search for a runt pulse with in along waveform record.

Search
Finding your event of interest in a long waveform record can be time consuming without the right search tools. With today's record lengths pushing beyond a million data points, locating your event can mean scrolling through thousands of screens of signal activity.

The Tektronix MSO-204 offers the industry's most comprehensive search and waveform navigation with its innovative Wave Inspector® controls. These controls speed panning and zooming through your record. With a unique force-feedback system, you can move from one end of your record to the other in just seconds. User marks allow you to mark any location that you may want to reference later for further investigation. Or, automatically search your record for criteria you define. Wave Inspector will instantly search your entire record, including analog and digital data. Along the way it will automatically mark every occurrence of your defined event so you can quickly move between events. The advanced search and mark capability of the Tektronix MSO-5104 can even search for up to eight different events simultaneously and stop a live acquisition when it finds an event of interest, saving even more time.

Waveform histogram of a falling edge showing the distribution of edge position (jitter) overtime.

Analyze
Verifying that your prototype's performance matches simulations and meets the project's design goals requires analyzing its behavior. Tasks can range from simple checks of rise times and pulse widths to sophisticated power loss analysis, characterization of system clocks, and investigation of noise sources. The Tektronix MSO5204 offers a comprehensive set of integrated analysis tools including waveform- and screen-based cursors, 53 automated measurements, advanced waveform math including arbitrary equation editing, waveform histograms, and FFT analysis.

Every Tektronix MSO 5204 oscilloscope includes the DPOJET Essentials jitter and eye pattern analysis software package, extending the oscilloscope's measurement capabilities to make measurements over contiguous clock and data cycles in a single-shot real-time acquisition. This enables measurement of key jitter and timing analysis parameters such as Time Interval Error and Phase Noise to help characterize possible system timing issues. Analysis tools such as plots for time trends and histograms quickly show how timing parameters change over time, and spectrum analysis quickly shows the precise frequency and amplitude of jitter and modulation sources.

Specialized application support for serial bus debug and compliance test, jitter and eye pattern analysis, power supply design, limit/mask testing, and DDR memory bus analysis is also available.

Wave Inspector Navigation and Search

A 12.5M point standard record length represents thousands of screens of information. The Tektronix MSO5204 enables you to find your event in seconds with Wave Inspector, the industry's best tool for navigation and search.

Wave Inspector offers the following innovative controls:

Zoom/Pan:
A dedicated, two-tier front-panel control provides intuitive control of both zooming and panning. The inner control adjusts the zoom factor (or zoom scale); turning it clockwise activates zoom and goes to progressively higher zoom factors, while turning it counterclockwise results in lower zoom factors and eventually turning zoom off. No longer do you need to navigate through multiple menus to adjust your zoom view. The outer control pans the zoom box across the waveform to quickly get to the portion of waveform you are interested in. The outer control also utilizes force feedback to determine how fast to pan on the waveform. The farther you turn the outer control, the faster the zoom box moves. Pan direction is changed by simply turning the control the other way.

Play/pause:
A dedicated Play/Pause front-panel button scrolls the waveform across the display automatically while you look for anomalies or an event of interest. Playback speed and direction are controlled using the intuitive pan control. Once again, turning the control further makes the waveform scroll faster and changing direction is as simple as turning the control the other way.

User Marks:
Press the Set Mark front-panel button to place one or more marks on the waveform. Navigating between marks is as simple as pressing the Previous and Next buttons on the front panel.

Search Marks:
The Search button allows you to automatically search through your long acquisition looking for user-defined events. All occurrences of the event are highlighted with search marks and are easily navigated to, using the front-panel Previous and Next buttons. Search types include edge, pulse width/glitch, timeout, runt, logic, setup and hold, rise/fall time, parallel bus, and I2C, SPI, USB, Ethernet, CAN, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I2S/LJ/RJ/TDM packet content.

Digital Phosphor Technology

Digital phosphor technology enables greater than 250,000 wfm/s waveform capture rate and real-time color grading

The Tektronix MSO5204's digital phosphor technology provides you with fast insight into the real operation of your device. Its fast waveform capture rate – greater than 250,000 wfm/s – gives you a high probability of quickly seeing the infrequent problems common in digital systems: runt pulses, glitches, timing issues, and more.

Waveforms are superimposed with one another and waveform points are color coded by frequency of occurrence. This quickly highlights the events that occur more often over time or, in the case of infrequent anomalies, occur less often.

With the Tektronix MSO5204, you can choose infinite persistence or variable persistence, determining how long the previous waveform acquisitions stay on-screen. This allows you to determine how often an anomaly is occurring.

Accurate High-speed Probing

The TPP Series probes, included standard with every Tektronix MSO5204 oscilloscope, provide up to 1 GHz of analog bandwidth, and less than 4 pF of capacitive loading. The extremely low-capacitive loading minimizes adverse affects on your circuits and is more forgiving of longer ground leads. And with the probe's wide bandwidth, you can see the high-frequency components in your signal, which is critical for high-speed applications. The TPP Series passive voltage probes offer all the benefits of general-purpose probes like high dynamic range, flexible connection options, and robust mechanical design, while providing the performance of active probes.

Mixed Signal Design and Analysis

The Tektronix MSO5204 mixed-signal oscilloscopes provide 16 digital channels. These channels are tightly integrated into the oscilloscope's user interface, simplifying operation and making it possible to solve mixed-signal issues easily.

Color-coded Digital Waveform Display
The Tektronix MSO 5204 has redefined the way you view digital waveforms. One common problem with other mixed-signal oscilloscopes is determining if data is a one or a zero when zoomed in far enough that the digital trace stays flat all the way across the display. To avoid this problem, the Tektronix MSO5204 Series has color-coded digital traces, displaying ones in green and zeros in blue.

The multiple transition detection hardware of the Tektronix MSO5204 will show you when the system detects more than one transition. This indicates that more information is available by zooming in or acquiring at faster sampling rates. In most cases zooming in will reveal a glitch that was not viewable with the previous settings.

MagniVu High-speed Acquisition
The main digital acquisition mode on the Tektronix MSO-5204 will capture up to 40M points at 500 MS/s (2 ns resolution). In addition to the main record, the Tektronix MSO5104 provides an ultra high-resolution record called MagniVu which acquires 10,000 points at up to 16.5 GS/s (60.6 ps resolution). Both the main and MagniVu waveforms are acquired on every trigger and can be switched between on the display at any time, running or stopped. MagniVu provides significantly finer timing resolution than comparable mixed-signal oscilloscopes on the market, instilling confidence when making critical timing measurements on digital waveforms.

Designed to Make Your Work Easier

Large, High-resolution Display
The Tektronix MSO 5204 features a 10.4 in. (264 mm) XGA color display with an integrated touch screen for seeing intricate signal details.

Dedicated Front-panel Controls
Per-channel vertical controls provide simple and intuitive operation. No longer do you need to share one set of vertical controls across all four channels.

Connectivity
Two USB host ports on the front panel enable easy transfer of screenshots, instrument settings, and waveform data to a USB thumb drive. The rear panel contains four additional USB host ports and a USB device port for controlling the oscilloscope remotely from a PC or for connecting USB peripherals. An integrated 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet port enables easy connection to networks and a Video Out port allows the oscilloscope display to be exported to an external monitor or projector. PS-2 ports for keyboard and mouse are included for security-conscious applications that require the USB ports to be disabled. A standard removable hard disk drive makes customizing settings for different users easy as well as enables use in secure environments.

Compact Form Factor
A compact, portable form factor allows the Tektronix MSO/5204 to be easily moved between labs and, with a depth of just 8.12 in. (206 mm), it saves you valuable space on your test bench. Additionally the 5U rack height makes the Tektronix MSO5204 an ideal choice for ATE applications where rack space is limited.

TekVPI Probe Interface
The TekVPI probe interface sets the standard for ease of use in probing. TekVPI probes feature status indicators and controls, as well as a probe menu button right on the probe itself. This button brings up a probe menu on the oscilloscope display with all relevant settings and controls for the probe. The TekVPI interface enables direct attachment of a current probe without requiring a separate power supply. TekVPI probes can be controlled remotely through USB, GPIB, or Ethernet, enabling more versatile solutions in ATE environments.

MyScope Custom Control Window
Easily create your own personalized "toolbox" of oscilloscope features in a matter of minutes using a simple, visual, drag-and-drop process. Once created, these custom control windows are easily accessed through a dedicated MyScope menu selection on the oscilloscope. This is ideal in a shared resource environment where each person can have their own custom control interface suited to their particular use. MyScope control windows benefit all oscilloscope users, eliminating the ramp-up time that many face when returning to the lab after not using an oscilloscope for a while, and enabling power users to be far more efficient.

Remote Operation and Extended Analysis
There are many ways to connect to your Tektronix MSO-5204 oscilloscope to conduct extended analysis. The first makes use of the Windows Remote Desktop capability – connect directly to your oscilloscope and operate the user interface remotely through the built-in Remote Desktop. A second way to connect is through Tektronix OpenChoice software which makes use of the fast embedded bus, transferring waveform data directly from acquisition to analysis applications on the Windows desktop at much faster speeds than conventional GPIB transfers. Industry-standard protocols, such as TekVISA interface and ActiveX controls are included for using and enhancing Windows applications for data analysis and documentation. IVI-COM instrument drivers are included to enable easy communication with the oscilloscope using GPIB, serial data, and LAN connections from programs running on the instrument or an external PC. Or, use the Software Developer's Kit (SDK) to help create custom software to automate multistep processes in waveform collection and analysis with Visual BASIC, C, C++, MATLAB, LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, and other common Application Development Environments (ADE). Microsoft Excel and Word toolbars are included to simplify data capture and transfer directly to these programs running on the Windows desktop. A third way to connect to your oscilloscope is through NI LabVIEW SignalExpress Tektronix Edition, enabling you to instantly acquire, generate, analyze, compare, import, and save measurement data and signals using an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface that does not require any programming.