Calling All whom are familiar with the Tektronix TLS 216!!! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: grantwsmith
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 19, 2023, 06:35:34 pm
content: Howdy ya'llI recently have become the proud owner of 2x Tektronix TLS 216 "Logic Scopes"I have 16x of the Tektronix 013-0282-00 Coax Adapters, and 16x of the "regular" active probes it comes with.I have yet to get to unpacking all the stuff but i already know there is a LOT i might need to do to preserve and calibrate these devices. One of them i bought for a steal at 200$ CAD, but it has a calibration error which i have yet to investigate.I know from my research already that i should probably dump the firmware off this thing, which will involve using the IEEE-488 GPIB port and i need the hardware to interface to that.According to the maker of this video:(See his vid description)The caps of these probably need to be replaced, and looking at other forum posts it also looks like the dallas chip could need to be swapped.I'm certain there is a lot im missing out here and i'm reaching out to the community, please help me bring these two beauties back to life!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Plans:I'm planning on using these two scopes as basically a single large 32 channel oscilloscope.This will require the following changes:1) I am planning on removing the whack custom connectors that this thing uses. Either i will convert all the channels using the tektronix BNC adapters or remove the front panel and link directly to the internal RF connectors harnessed together. That would require designing my own high frequency attenuators, with the right amplifier circuits that can handle high speed. If i go down this path i'm also going to make all the probes isolated active differential probes because if i'm going to be bothered designing a PCB I may as well make add that feature so i can then probe any combination of nets however i like.This might be insanely overambitious but I'm willing to try my hand at it.I design PCBs for a living so i have a license of Altium Designer, Circuit Studio and Solidworks. So I'm willing to pour a lot of time and $$$ into this project, and probably will.( I am aware that likely i'd have to make more than one set of attenuator/amplifier circuits becuase asking for 500MHz at high voltage is asking too much so i'd be fine with having upwards of three variants. One BNC 50Ohm set for regular probes, I only care if these work to 100Mhz. Maybe 150MHz would be nice but i don't care that much. The 2nd set would probably come out as some kind of convenient "Logic Analyzer" Style leads of some kind, these I'll need to think further about. And if there is a 3rd set maybe it could be used as a 75Ohm for something but I don't know. )2 ) I'm planning to have the scopes be placed inside an enclosure with only the (as of yet TBD) modded probes accessible. I will try and use the programming interface to use the two scopes 100% completely headless with no touching of the controls once inside the enclosure. That way I can add appropriate filters and airflow to keep them cool but prevent any dust ingress as much as possible. The controls will be directed to an external PC with whatever software I build to interface with this device. The VGA will also be captured from both and displayed or streamed as needed.3 ) Synchronizing these two scopes will probably have to come in the form of external triggering. Once both scopes are individually calibrated and setup i'll need to figure out a way to trigger them in a controlled way. Maybe have one trigger the other in a master-slave config. Maybe have both of them setup to an external device that triggers them both with calibrated timing. I'm not sure but being able to have one trigger capture up to 32 signals would be amazing.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2023, 07:45:10 pm
content: Did you check the acquisition depth this oscilloscope? It has only 2kpts per channel and no peak detect to add to the insult. I have looked at this model in the past but decided to stay far away from it! Before putting a lot of time into these scopes, try and use these for measurements as they are. It is very likely you'll run into the short memory depth combined with lack of peak detect quickly. IMHO this is one product where Tektronix has missed the mark completely.

author: grantwsmith
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 19, 2023, 07:59:01 pm
content: I am aware of the limited memory.However i intend to use this device more to monitor a large amount of slower signals. Slower than 50Mhz for sure, and by for sure i mean basically 100%. My workplace has a very cheap and slow scope only able to get to 50MHz and all of the circuit my predecessor designed more or less fit into that frequency range.Hopefully it's not as big a limitation as you say, I can always buy other scopes for that purpose. I doubt i'd ever even need to analyze a USB low speed or Full Speed let alone high speed. And I don't care about auto-decode features it lacks as i'm used to manually decoding frames as a force of habit instilled while i was a student.And since i plan to dump all the datapoints onto an external device I can maybe choose a slow sample rate, something in the low MS/s with only that channel active, lock it the "Zoom" and keep it at that sample rate and just find a resolution that's good enough even if it's a bit course.