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From: rgc@wam.umd.edu (Ross Garrett Cutler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Summary: Oscilloscopes and Real Time
Message-ID: <1990Oct24.210232.24492@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 90 21:02:32 GMT
Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting)
Reply-To: rgc@wam.umd.edu (Ross Garrett Cutler)
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 25

Hello, 
	Sorry for the long delay, but not much response was generated by
these two questions.  Anyway, I've played around with MonsterScope, and
it's quite nice for audio-range frequencies.  This suits my needs
for now.  Too bad the source doesn't come with the NeXT.

As for real-time acquisition, the NeXT is not sufficient.   I was hoping
to hook up an A/D converter to the DSP port and read in my data that way.
But there's no guarantee that when something else slows down the system
I won't lose any data.  You could argue that just don't let anyone else
on the system while you're acuiring data; but what if someone mails me
some voice mail; or what if Mach just hicups as UNIX systems do sometimes.
You could also say that you've used Digital Ears and have had no problems.
But have you tested it?  The rate of data I need to sample is not much,
but if I lose a millisecond anywhere, it's no good.  I've talked to the
makers of Digital Ears and they admit that you could lose data and there's
*no* indication if you do.  

Oh well, too bad.  I'm still getting a NeXTstation for home, but it would 
be nice if we could replace the PC's in our labs with them as well.
--
Please email -- I'll summarize.
Ross Cutler
University of Maryland, College Park
Internet: rgc@wam.umd.edu