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Review . . . By Leo Simpson LeCroy WaveRunner 104Mxi 1GHz Oscilloscope LeCroy’s WaveRunner 104Mxi is a 4-channel digital oscilloscope which operates under Windows XP. You can configure and run the scope using either a USB mouse or via the touch screen. In fact, most of the time you can completely ignore the front panel controls and just use the mouse. I WILL BE honest. When I first turned on the LeCroy WaveRunner 104Mxi I did not realise it had a Windows XP interface. LeCroy do not make a big fuss about it in their literature; in fact they hardly mention it at all. So when I had to do a quick waveform measurement recently and I knew I had to take a look at the LeCroy I just grabbed it and set it up on my desk, ready to do the measurement. I switched it on, hooked up a couple of probes and hit the Autoset button. This gave me a waveform on the screen, as you would expect, but when I came to do the measurements I was bushed – OK, where are the measurement controls? I will admit that just like everyone else, I had not looked at any instruction manual – who does that? (In fact, I did not find the instruction manual until 16  Silicon Chip some days later – in the back pocket of the scope). But then in a moment of enlightenment, I touched the screen and found that I could do everything that way. There are the usual dropdown Windows menus along the top of screen – it all works. It’s not the first Windows oscilloscope I have come across but I seem to remember that the others I have come across are not as intuitive as the LeCroy. By the way, LeCroy probably don’t want you to put your greasy paws on the touch screen so they have provided a little slide-out wand which you can use instead. After using that for a couple of minutes, I thought that a USB mouse would be a better way and sure enough, when I dived back into the packaging, the local distributors, Vicom, had provided one. Plugging that into the front panel immediately lets you do everything via the mouse. The layout of the scope’s front panel looks fairly conventional until you start looking for a particular feature such as how to set up triggering. This throws you into a display whereby you select parameters via the wand or mouse. But back to the scope itself. The screen itself is a 10.4-inch (26.4cm) SVGA LCD with a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. This improves considerably if you connect an external monitor which can give a stated maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels (4:3 aspect ratio). When connected to a widescreen LCD monitor, we were able to set it to 1920 x 1200 pixels. We will come back to the operation of the external monitor later. Below the scope screen is a line of five BNC sockets; one each of the four input channels and one for an external siliconchip.com.au These four scope grabs from the LeCroy 104Mxi portray a range of video waveforms from the Pocket A/V Generator presented in the June 2006 issue. All but one show the scope traces reversed out of white background. This saves toner when printing the scope grabs and makes it easier to read the on-screen measurements. trigger source. All the inputs have probe sensing and active probes may be used. Also on the front panel is the already-mentioned USB socket which can be used to connect a mouse. To the right of the screen is an array of knobs and buttons which let you select and adjust basic features of the scope, eg, vertical sensitivity and offset for each of the four input channels and timebase speed and delay. Each time you press a button or change a knob setting, it brings up a panel on the lower half of the screen which lets you access detailed settings. In many ways, this works better than typical digital scopes which have “soft” buttons and multi-layered menus which can be quite hard to navigate, particularly if you don’t use the scope frequently. On the righthand side of the scope is a comprehensive input panel for connection of peripherals. There are mini DIN sockets for an external mouse and keyboard, four USB sockets, an Ethernet port (RJ-45), an RS-232 port, a VGA port for connecting an external monitor (as already mentioned), LeCroy’s L-bus connector and line-in and speaker outputs for the sound card interface. So essentially what we have is a laptop machine with a powerful digital scope built-in. In fact, there is nothing to stop you from using it as a conventional laptop. Just connect a full-size keyboard and USB printer (if you wish) and you’re ready to go. Using Windows XP, it employs a 1.3GHz Celeron processor and 512MB of RAM. siliconchip.com.au The LeCroy WaveRunner 104Mxi is a powerful digital scope that runs under Windows XP. And of course, you can connect it to a network if you desire. The internal hard drive is 33GB, partitioned into 10GB and 23GB, so there is no lack of capacity to store waveforms and setups and other software. Normally, when you turn it, on it boots straight into Windows XP and February 2009  17 The panel on the side of the machine includes an ethernet port, LeCroy’s L-bus connector and I/O sockets for various peripherals & sound. The scope display can be run in a window on the XP desktop or maximised to fill the screen as shown here. then loads the LeCroy DSO operating system. This can be windowed or minimised at any time to let you run other applications. The 10.4-inch (diagonal) screen is a very good size, especially considering the relatively small amount of space taken up by the scope. Its overall dimensions are 340mm wide, 255mm high and 200mm deep, including knobs and the rear zippered pocket for probes and accessories. Having said that, the ability to connect an external VGA monitor is very useful, particularly if you are using the scope to demonstrate to a group or classroom. Typically, in a large group, the VGA signal would be connected to a projector but it is here that a weakness in the LeCroy external monitor set-up becomes apparent. Unlike the situation where you may be using a laptop for a PowerPoint presentation on a projector, the LeCroy scope does not allow you to have the same screen display on the scope as on the projector; you can have one or the other, not both. This makes it difficult to operate the scope when using the external display because nothing can be controlled by its touch screen – you have to use the mouse on the external 18  Silicon Chip screen. That could be very awkward if you are using a projector. It seems likely that a software change could easily remedy this. On the other hand, when using the external monitor, it is very good to be able to have the scope operate on the external screen while you do other functions on the scope screen such as saving screen grabs or any other software function. In fact, if I had connected a full keyboard and loaded Word onto the LeCroy, I could have written this review on the machine while I tested its capabilities as a scope. Unfortunately, time constraints prevented us from fully evaluating the LeCroy 104Mxi but it quickly becomes obvious that it is a fully featured 4-channel 1GHz 10Gs/s machine with very comprehensive waveform measurements. The full specifications of the WaveRunner scopes are available at http://www.lecroy.com/tm/products/ scopes/specs.asp?mseries=32 A unique feature allows you to do separate measurements on each trace, something that is just not available on competing scopes. Importantly, the range of vertical input sensitivity is from 2mV to 10V/div in the usual 1-2- 5 sequence. You need the maximum figure of 10V so that you can measure 240VAC waveforms with a 10:1 probe. That gives you 100V/div on screen. If your scope is limited to 5V/div, you need a 100:1 probe to enable you do the same thing; a small point perhaps but most labs do not have more than one 100:1 probe and this can be a hassle if you want to measure more than one 240VAC waveform at a time. The timebase can be switched from 200 picoseconds to 10s/div in real time and up to 1000s/div in roll mode. Very comprehensive triggering is available, including TV (PAL, NTSC, SECAM and non-standard video modes up to 1500 lines), ORed-qualified, Pattern (logic combinations), Dropout, glitches and pulse widths, runt, slew rate and so on. So how do summarise a scope like this? It certainly has a very wide range of high-performance features but the fact that it is operated under Windows probably means that it is easier to drive than if it relied on a multi-level menu system operated by soft keys – we liked it a lot. For further information regarding price and availability of the full range of LeCroy digital oscilloscopes, contact the Australian distributors, Vicom Australia Pty Ltd, 1064 Centre Road, Oakleigh South, Vic 3167. Phone (03) 9563 7844; fax (03) 9579 7255; website SC www.vicom.com.au siliconchip.com.au