Technical data

888 Agilent Infiniium 90000 Series Oscilloscopes Programmer's Reference
32 Waveform Commands
:WAVeform:FORMat
Command :WAVeform:FORMat {ASCii | BINary | BYTE | WORD}
The :WAVeform:FORMat command sets the data transmission mode for
waveform data output. This command controls how the data is formatted
when it is sent from the oscilloscope, and pertains to all waveforms. The
default format is ASCii.
Histograms can only be ACSii or BINary.
Digital buses and pod- all are not compatible with BYTE.
ASCii ASCii- formatted data consists of waveform data values converted to the
currently selected units, such as volts, and are output as a string of ASCII
characters with each value separated from the next value by a comma. The
values are formatted in floating point engineering notation. For example:
8.0836E+2,8.1090E+2,...,-3.1245E- 3
The ASCii format does not send out the header information indicating the
number of bytes being downloaded.
In ASCii format:
• The value "99.999E+36" represents a hole value. A hole can occur when
you are using the equivalent time sampling mode when during a single
acquisition not all of the acquisition memory locations contain sampled
waveform data. It can take several acquisitions in the equivalent time
sampling mode to fill all of the memory locations.
BYTE BYTE-formatted data is formatted as signed 8- bit integers. Depending on
your programming language and IO library, you may need to create a
function to convert these signed bytes to signed integers. In BYTE format:
Table 26 Selecting a Format
Type Advantages Disadvantages
ASCii Data is returned as voltage values
and does not need to be converted
and is as accurate as WORD format.
Very slow data download rate.
BYTE Data download rate is twice as fast
as the WORD format.
Data is less accurate than the WORD
format for analog channels.
WORD Data is the most accurate for analog
channels.
Data download rate takes twice as
long as the BYTE format.
BINary This format can be used for analog
channels and for HISTogram source.
Data download rate takes twice as
long as the BYTE format for analog
channels.