Re: gEDA-user: OT BitScope?

[Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 05 February 2006 02:53, Ray Warren wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 12:27:34AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Saturday 04 February 2006 23:34, Ray Warren wrote:
>> >On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 11:13:54PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> >> On Saturday 04 February 2006 22:52, Bert Douglas wrote:
>> >> >I have a digiview.  It works well.  Amazingly small.  The whole
>> >> > logic analyzer fits in the "pod".
>> >> >http://www.tech-tools.com/dv_main.htm
>> >>
>> >> Neat.  Too bad it only runs on winderz.  I could get interested
>> >> if it would run on linux.  OTOH, I suspect it wouldn't be that
>> >> hard to write a linux capture driver for it either if one were
>> >> already an expert usb driver writer.
>> >
>> >That's why I am interested  in the Bitscope, they advertise a Linux
>> >application that utilizes all the capabilities of the hardware.
>> >Ray Warren
>>
>> Oh?  Its not mentioned on that link above.  All the requirements
>> list is winderz stuffs so I assumed no linux users need apply
>
>I guess it's not advertised  but if you hunt for it it's there,
> http://www.bitscope.com/software/dso/
> about 2/3 of the way down the page.
> Somebody should talk to their advertising people.
> Ray Warren

Yes, its not that obvious although when they do get to it, the 
propaganda seems complete enough.  I'm surprised that the BS440 is 
board only, no box.  It seems to me that should add maybe 50 bucks to 
the $1300 already being asked.  It seems to have most of the features 
I'd want except the input attenuators could stand some help.  There 
have been times when I was looking at spikes over 3kv coming out of the 
wall plug.  TV transmitter, high power uhf, 200+ kwh line draw, with 
several tons of a sola transformer between us and the powerline.  

Lightning finally got that big sola, and it was bypassed, which allowed 
the recovery spikes of the 3 phase high voltage bridge to be absorbed 
by the power grid, which reduced those spikes by 95%.  Equipment 
started lasting longer by an obvious amount, particularly light bulbs 
and fl ballasts.  Even tower lights lasted 2x longer.  We thought of 
replaceing the hv diode strings with schotkey's but that would have 
cost $everal thou$and and would have tripled the space requirements for 
them in a very crowded rectifier cabinet due to their lower reverse 
voltage ratings so it was never done.

It was the reverse recovery of the normal utility power si diode, 20-30 
microseconds to turn off, which locked the phase going down to the 
phase coming up during that time period, and when they recovered, a 
huge inductive spike was generated all the way back through the beam 
transformers to the line.  6 of those spikes per cycle.  We were using 
std 50kw 14.4kv line to 230vac (delta) line transformers backwards to 
step the 230V 3 phase up to make the 20kv at 10 to 12 amps of beam 
supply the transmitter needed.  We were Wayne County Public Powers 
biggest customer by a rather large margin.  The building entrance 
breaker was 1200 amps.  Wayne County NE, KXNE-TV, ch 19, an NETV 
station I engineered at for about 8 years back in the early 70's.

We also considered chokes, but the thought of winding chokes with 4 
parallel pieces of 0000 copper per phase, and then cooling them, 
scuttled that idea.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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