Ever since abandoning the faithful Tektronix 2245 oscilloscope I've been a fan of Rigol digital 'scopes; compact and a load of functionality for modest money (FFT and 1Gig samples/sec in my little DS1052E).
Rigol have been less than stellar in keeping the Windows software current and so here are some cobbled-together instruction (from http://www.milkcarton.com amongst others - but his website is often down?).
- Download Ultrascope for your particular series (so DS1000E in my case)
- Download the Windows driver (had to find this on the Way Back Machine!), Extract these two files, then go find the device in the Device Manager. Update the driver and point it to the directory where you extract the driver files.
- Next, download the NI-VISA Run-Time Engine (v5.0.3 as of this writing). Beware, this file weighs in at 71 MB. Install the VISA runtime with the default options (you could probably get away with just installing the USB portion, but I didn’t try it).
- When the NI-VISA installer finally finishes, you might be prompted to reboot. I skipped this step :-). Run the Ultrascope software, and click on Tools –> Connect to Oscilloscope. I was prompted with a list of devices, with none of it making much sense, except the first option “USB0…”
