jhs%Mitre-Bedford@d3unix.UUCP (03/13/85)
(I wish I could collect the value of this free advertising to the vendor...!) Rapid System, Inc., 5415 136th Place, Vellevue, WA 98006 is offering a "Digital Oscilloscope Peripheral" for several popular Personal Computers. The device boasts 500 KHz bandwidth (2 MHz sampling rate) and sensitivity down to 100 mV per division (which is 8 pixels vertically). It has FOUR separate inputs for vertical channels, plus a separate TRIGGER input with polarity and sensitivity controls. It provides also for internal triggering, apparently only when looking at a single channel. (Why don't they gate it so you can look at all four but trigger off only channel A? Oh, well...) The peripheral sells for $399 for the Commodore and $499 for Apple and IBM iterfaced models. (What the traffic will bear is the name of the pricing strategy they used, I guess!) So far, so good. However, they ALSO offer a nifty software package called a Spectrum Analyzer! So if you are too dumb or lazy, or both, to write your own, you can have not only a 'scope but also an audio (500 KHz) spectrum analyzer for around $600 if you already have the computer and the display. (The spectrum analyzer package sells for $149.) It's not exactly realtime -- they quote 15 minutes worst case to do a spectrum plot, including data collection, FFT and plotting -- but it sure is cheap compared to Hewlett Packard! Rapid Systems evidently isn't big on phone numbers. Possibly they don't have a phone in the garage. Anyway, it looks like a very nice product for either hobbyists or low-budget industrial labs who need a not very wideband but VERY cheap scope and spectrum analyzer. If anybody has used the system or has bought one, a "road test report" would be very much of interest to the Net. Congrats to Rapid Systems on a VERY interesting new product for the ham / hobbyist / industrial / academic community. I wish them success with it! 73, de W3IKG