I like the Pico's capabilities and will likely go this route to replace my dearly departed Fluke99. My Q is simple I have an old, but fully functional P120 laptop with 40 megs of ram-Win95OSR2.Will this run the PicoScope ?  My budget is NOT unlimited and my Genisys is about due to be retired for a next gen unit so buying a new laptop isn't going to be in the cards for a while. Thanks, Steve

Hi Steve,

You will have to be sure you have an available parallel port because you won't be able to go USB.  You'll need sufficient hard drive space to save all your captures, but it should run it ok.  Certain functions may be slower but the scope speed is mainly dependent on it's own internal memory, so that will not be affected.  

I'm sure the 5.09.5 software will work fine.  I don't know of any users that have run the new version on a Win 95 machine, but I don't have any reason to think it would not work.  If it runs the demo ok it should be fine.  Load it up and see  ;)

The demo is available here:

http://www.autonerdz.com/picokit.htm

Since you'll be using your parallel port for Pico, you may not be able to print your captures but, unless you want to do that for customers, no biggie.

Thanks for the quick reply, the laptop is my first PC, I have a MUCH more powerful desktop that I use most of the time, the old machine has a whopping 1 Gig drive, but little more than the OS on it. In theory the version of Win95 should have early USB support, but unless I get a USB card it's a moot point. Steve  

Sure, Steve.  There have been many using desktop PCs with Pico  The design lends a lot of flexibility to set it up in a way that suits your unique requirements.

Maybe you already saw this post, but we put up some photos etc of different ways Pico has been deployed:

http://www.autonerdz.com/cgi/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=picopub;action=display;num=1083810927

8)

At what point am I wasting the power of the PC? Let's assume that I am going to use a Pico 3423. If I use a computer with a 3ghz processor and 1gig ram will it perform better than a 1ghz processor and 256meg ram?
Is there acyually a point where a more powerfull computer will give me nothing in the way of performance with the 3423 scope?

Glad you brought this up again.  The new 3000 series scopes have to have an available USB port.  We still support the 212 series parallel port units but no longer carry them.  Here are the PC requirements for the 3000 series:

Processor: Pentium class processor or equivalent
Memory: 32 MB minimum
Disk space: 10 MB minimum
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP or later
Ports: USB 1.1 compliant port minimum. USB 2.0 compliant port recommended. Must be connected direct to the port or a powered USB hub


Quote:

If I use a computer with a 3ghz processor and 1gig ram will it perform better than a 1ghz processor and 256meg ram?

No.  Unlike some other PC based DSOs that are dependent on the PC memory and speed to work, PicoScope is not.  PicoScope has its own internal memory.  The PC is simply a display and control interface and provides hard drive storage for recording, saved captures, images etc.  USB 2.0 is recommended because of the faster data transfer rates.  PicoScope is USB 1.1 compatible but won't move the data to the PC as fast.  This does not affect the sample rates because that is all internal, but your screen updates will be a bit slower because it takes longer to move each block of data to the PC.

PicoScope has the ability to write each buffered block of data to the hard drive automatically.  How much down time there is between each block is a function of the size of the data block and the transfer speed.  Results may vary, but I did an experiment to see how fast the 3423 was totally maxed out on buffer size running all four channels.  I put one second on each screen (block) and recorded for thirty seconds.  I had 27 screens written to the hard drive using USB 2.0.  That's 90% of everything that was happening.  USB 1.1 got about 55% of the data just because it took longer to move each block to the PC.

Keep in mind that the 3000 series scopes are a quantum leap forward and the software has not caught up yet.  I expect, as the software grows into these new units, that we will see some even more amazing things.

So the additional PC power will not make PicoScope run any better but it will make your other applications run faster, depending on the application.  Plus, you will be able to do more multitasking with the PC before it slows down.