Somewhat off topic gripe.

[BillO]

[gripe]This has bothered me for some time.

I have a plethora of oscilloscopes knocking around. It would be real handy if they could be linked together. All it would take is to have an external trigger input on each scope and a trigger out. Then you could easily slave one or more scopes off a master. Why was this never thought of? Most scopes have an external trigger input, but I have yet to see one that has a trigger out. To me this seems like a no-brainer.

How sweet would it be to have an 8 ch. scope?[/gripe]

[ttlworks]

Some of the transient recorders might have a trigger output that can be configurated to fire when there was an input trigger event
or when the recording is complete for linking transient recorders together.

Hmm... from your text, what you need seems to be a "trigger box" that contains a fast analog comparator triggering a bunch of "monoflops"
for generating individually delayed trigger signals for your scopes.

Of course, analog monoflops like 74HCT123 might have a considerable propagation delay, and digital monoflops built with counters would give you a jitter.

Edit:
Linear Technology application note AN72: A Seven-Nanosecond Comparator for Single Supply Operation.
Texas Instruments 74AHCT123 dual retriggerable monostable multivibrators.

[cbmeeks]

You may want to ask over on the EEVBlog forum. 'ol Dave might even turn it into a show. Sounds like an interesting idea to me.

[ttlworks]

Trigger circuitry of the Hameg HM605 oscilloscope was nice.

The NE529 comparator used in the HM605 trigger circuitry seems to be out of production,
but the LM361 is supposed to be a pin compatible replacement for the NE529.

[PaulF]

Do any of your scopes have an X output (Usually, older scopes had this.)

You could then feed it to the X input of the others and they would all run to the same timebase. (assuming the others have an X input. Modern scopes make you sacrifice a Y channel for an X input!)