on Apr 9, 2007If you have a 5000 or 6000 Series oscilloscope and want to save a *.bmp, *.png, *.csv or *.ascii-xy use the "QUICK PRINT" button located on the front panel of the oscilloscope. If you use the "SAVE" button from the soft key menu, the oscilloscope will save a setup and trc file to your thumbdrive.
1. Plug in the USB storage device.
2. Press the Save/Recall button and then the Formats softkey.
3. Press the Print to softkey repeatedly to select the ASCII XY data files format. Note that the CSV data file format will also work, although the number of points will be limited to 1000.
4. When you’re ready to save the waveform, press the Quick Print button. The scope will create the CSV file on your USB device with an automatically generated file name (print_x_y.csv).
5. Subsequent presses of Quick Print create additional CSV files with each file name incremented by 1. Note that this will work even after power is cycled; you will not need to repeat these steps unless you want to change to a different format.
To maximize the number of points available, make sure all the points are represented on screen and that you press Single. The number of points is limited to 1000 when the scope is running, and to (max memory)/2 when you press Stop. You can get the full memory when you press Single.
Also note that there are several timebase/sample rate combinations that do not result in 100% use of available memory. For example, if your scope is a DSO6012A (2 GSa/s) with the 8M memory option:
(time across screen [s]) * (sample rate [Sa/s]) = (memory depth [Sa])
(2 ms) * (2 GSa/s) = 4M (scope won't operate at 4 GSa/s for 8M points)
(5 ms) * (1 GSa/s) = 5M (scope won't operate at 1.6 GSa/s for 8M points)
(10 ms) * (1 GSa/s) = 5M (scope won't operate at 800 MSa/s for 8M points)
(20 ms) * (400 MSa/s) = 8M (scope operates at 400 MSa/s for 8M points)
So 20 ms (2 ms/div) is the fastest sweep speed at which you will get the full 8M points.