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Taunton, Mass. Keithley MetraByte has launched two pc-board lines that underscore the shift to higher-performance measurements with standards-based desktop and portable computers. One board, the DAS-4300, samples at 1 GHz, which makes it one of the fastest commercially available 8-bit data-acquisition (DAQ) boards.
Many competing boards are aimed at industrial and laboratory operations that want to move to lower-cost measurements but can't afford to sacrifice performance in the process. The intended applications include real-time signal processing, spectrum analysis and video development.
One of the two families, the DAS-4000 Series, targets IBM PC and compatibles; the other, the DASCard-1000 Series, transforms standard notebook PCs into field-bound DAQ systems.
Three boards currently make up the DAS-4000 line. Each shares a common architecture and core features including 8-bit flash converters, programmable gain and offset and a variety of triggering modes. Those modes include analog and pre- and post-triggers. But there are differences in sampling rate, input range and bandwidth as well as memory capacity.
The DAS-4100 takes in data over two independent channels at up to 64 Msamples/second and 50-MHz input bandwidth. Optional equivalent-time sampling of repetitive waveforms can go as high as 2Gsamples/s....