
PicoScope 3000A Series Prog rammer's Guide
5
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ps3000abpg.en r9
2.3
Minimum PC requirements
To ensure that your PicoScope 3000A Series oscilloscope operates correctly, you must
have a computer with at least the minimum system requirements to run one of the
supported operating systems, as shown in the following table. The performance of the
oscilloscope will be better with a more powerful PC, and will benefit from a multi-core
processor.
Item
Absolute
minimum
Recommended
minimum
Recommended
full specification
Operating system
Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
(not Windows RT)
32-bit and 64-bit versions
Processor
As required
by Windows
1 GHz
1 GHz
Memory
512 MB
512 MB
Free disk space*
32-bit: 600 MB
64-bit: 1.5 GB
2 GB
Ports
USB 1.1 port
USB 2.0 port (USB 2.0 scopes)
USB 3.0 port (USB 3.0 scopes)
*
The PicoScope software does not use all the disk space specified in the table.
The free space is required to make Windows run efficiently. The PicoScope
software is not installed as part of the SDK.
2.4
Voltage ranges
You can set a device input channel to any voltage range from ±50 mV to ±20 V with
the
function. Each sample is scaled to 16 bits so that the
values returned to your application are as follows:
Function
Voltage
Value returned
decimal
hex
ps3000aMinimumValue
minimum
–32 512
8100
zero
0
0000
ps3000aMaximumValue
maximum
32 512
7F00
2.5
Digital data
The data from the digital ports comes back as a 16-bit word. PORT0 and PORT1 use
only bits 0 to 7 of this word:
Data
Bits 0...7
Bits 8...15
PORT0
D0...D7
X
PORT1
D8...D15
X