NAME

tekdump - handle screendumps from Tektronix 11801A or DSA602 oscilloscope

SYNOPSIS

tekdump [ -b baud ] [ -l device ] [ -BUmvh ] [ -t type] prefix

tekdump [ -BUmv ] -f file

DESCRIPTION

Tekdump provides a convenient mechanism for capturing screen images from Tektronix oscilloscopes, such as the 11801A digital sampling oscilloscope or DSA-602 digitizing signal analyzer. A suitable cable is connected from the oscilliscope's EIA-232 port to a serial port on a host workstation; tekdump runs on the host and listens for data over the serial port. When the ``Hardcopy'' button on the front panel of the 11801A or DSA602 is pressed, it sends a bitmap image of the screen out the serial port. Tekdump writes each screen image to its own file on the host.

It takes about 30 seconds for each screen image to transfer over the serial port. The oscilliscopes have buffer memory for several screen images, so a hardcopy can be requested several times in succession before this transfer rate becomes a serious impediment.

OPTIONS

-B

Expect the screendump data from the scope to be in binary instead of what the manual calls ``BinHex'' format. This doesn't work yet, but might speed up the transfers slightly when I do get to it.

-U

Expect the screendump data from the scope to be in uncompressed form. The scope's hardcopy data format setting must be adjusted correspondingly. They take a long time to transfer this way.

-b baud

Set the serial port to the specified baud rate. The serial port on the scope must be set to the same rate.

-f file

Convert raw screen dump data in file to the selected bitmap format. This is useful mainly for debugging tekdump itself. The -b , -l , and -t options are disallowed in this mode.

-h

Print ``hash marks'' (the ``#'' character) on the screen to indicate progress while recieving a screen dump from the scope.

-l tty

Listen on the serial port device named tty instead of the default.

-m

Convert the screen image from color to monochrome black-on-white form. The color pallette used by the scope is such that some menu label text invariably comes out unreadable under any simple mapping of the eight 11801A colors to black and white, so this isn't all that useful.

-t type

Write the screen images in files of the specified type instead of in the default portable pixmap (ppm) format. Available types are:

gif

GIF format files named with a suffix of .gif. Use of this type requires that the ppmtogif executable be in your $PATH.

tiff

Tagged Image Format files named with a suffix of .tiff. Use of this filetype option requires pnmtotiff.

gzip

Ppm format files compressed with GNU zip and named with a suffix of .ppm.gz. Use of this type requires that gzip be in your $PATH.

.

-v

Operate in verbose mode. This can be useful for infering what's wrong when things don't work.

.

EXAMPLES

For typical screendump-server usage:

will listen on the default serial port at the default baud rate for information from the scope, and store successive screendumps in files named data0.ppm.gz, data1.ppm.gz, and so on. It will print "hash marks" to indicate progress while receiving a screen dump.

HARDWARE SETUP

Cables.

The Tektronix oscilliscope's RS232 port is a DCE, so a "straight through" RS232 cable is usually required for the connection. Since XON/XOFF flow control is used, only a three-wire connection is required for transmit and receive data and ground. A cable that works properly with a modem will probably work for this application.

Tektronix 11801A and DSA602 setup.

Press the Utility button on the 11801's front panel, and select the ``Hardcopy Parameters'' menu item with the touchscreen. Set ``printer'' to ``Bitmap dump,'' direction to ``horizontal,'' screen format to ``screen,'' data format to ``BinHex Compacted'' and output port to ``RS232C.''

The 11801A's Hardcopy Parameters menu is shown in the following image, which was captured with tekdump, of course.

Select the ``GPIB/RS232C'' menu item, and make sure that the RS232 parameters are set as follows. Baud rate should be 19200, parity is none, echo is off, stop bits set to 1, ``flagging'' is soft, delay is 0, ``EOL String'' is LF/CR, ``verbose'' is off, and ``RS232C Debug'' should be off. Don't mess with the GPIB settings.

The setup screens for the DSA602 are almost identical, except that there are three pages of utility menu items; after pressing the Utility button, touch the ``Page to Utility N'' item until the RS-232 and Hardcopy menu items appear.

Host computer.

Tekdump was developed on a pentium pro PC running Linux kernel 2.0.23. It compiles and the -f option works fine under HP-UX 10.20, but has never been tested with the scope connected directly to an HP. It should be easily portable to any POSIX compilant version of Unix with an ANSI C compiler.

FILES

/dev/cua0 - default serial port for communicating with the scope, at least under Linux.

SEE ALSO

ppm(1), pnmtotiff(1), ppmtogif(1), tty(4)

Tektronix 11801A Digital Sampling Oscilliscope User Manual, page 115 ``hardcopy'' and page 191, ``RS232-C Parameters.''

CAVEATS

There is no convenient way to capture the raw output from the scope in a file for later processing with tekdump's -f option.

Errors in serial data have been observed when tekdump's output is directed to the local disk on a Dell Optiplex-pro GX running a 2.0.23 kernel. These are indicated by occaisional ``bad character'' and ``incorrect line length'' error messages and by horizontal streaks in the output image. No such problems have been observed when directing the output to an NFS-mounted partition.

The oscilloscope puts an informational banner on the screen when each screen image has finished tranmission to the host. The hardcop function dumps the exact screen image, so if the hardcopy button is pressed again at this time, the next screendump will include this ``Hardcopy is complete'' banner. To clear the message, press any of the front panel buttons, for example ``Waveform.''

BUGS

The -B option doesn't work yet. When implemented, it will require the use of hardware flow control, which on the 11801A requires a nonstandard cable.

The 11801A's serial port only goes up to 19,200bps.

The 11801A is nice enough to send its idea of the date and time of the screendump, but there's really nothing useful that tekdump can do with this information.

AUTHOR

Steve Tell, tell@cs.unc.edu