Patent ID: 8046183

Claim:
A no dead time acquisition system for use in a digital oscilloscope, comprising: means for recognizing all trigger events within an electrical signal being monitored to produce a trigger signal; means for delaying a digitized signal representing the electrical signal, the delaying means including a buffer having a variable record length for delaying the digitized signal by an amount equal to a desired pre-trigger interval, the desired pre-trigger interval defining the variable record length, said variable length buffer being controllable to read out said delayed digitized signal from any point within said buffer; means for drawing a waveform for the digitized signal from the delaying means in real time in response to the trigger signal such that the waveform represents the electrical signal at the desired pre-trigger interval prior to a first trigger event within the trigger signal; and means for delaying the trigger signal by a desired post-trigger interval to produce a delayed trigger signal so that the drawing means, in response to the delayed trigger signal, produces the waveform that represents the electrical signal at the desired post-trigger interval after the first trigger event within the trigger signal.