Reference 21
Agilent InfiniiVision 3000 X-Series Oscilloscopes User's Guide 333
 
CSV and ASCII XY file structure
In CSV or ASCII XY format the Length control selects the number of points 
per segment. All segments are contained in the CSV file or in each ASCII 
XY data file.
For example: If the Length control is set to 1000 points, there will be 1000 
points (rows in the spreadsheet) per segment. When saving all segments 
there are three header rows, so the data for the first segment starts at 
row 4. The second segment's data starts at row 1004. The time column 
shows the time since the trigger on the first segment. The top row shows 
the selected number of points per segment.
BIN files are a more efficient data transfer format than CSV or ASCII XY. 
Use this file format for fastest data transfer.
Minimum and Maximum Values in CSV Files
If you are running a Minimum or Maximum measurement, the minimum 
and maximum values shown in the measurement display may not appear 
in the CSV file.
Explanation: When the oscilloscope's sample rate is 4 GSa/s, a sample will be taken 
every 250 ps. If the horizontal scale is set to 10 us/div, there will be 
100 us of data displayed (because there are ten divisions across the 
screen). To find the total number of samples the oscilloscope will take:
100 us x 4 GSa/s = 400K samples
The oscilloscope is required to display those 400K samples using 640 pixel 
columns. The oscilloscope will decimate the 400K samples to 640 pixel 
columns, and this decimation keeps track of the min and max values of all 
the points that are represented by any given column. Those min and max 
values will be displayed in that screen column.
A similar process is used to reduce the acquired data to produce a record 
usable for various analysis needs such as measurements and CSV data. 
This analysis record (or measurement record) is much larger than 640 
and may in fact contain up to 65536 points. Still, once the # of acquired 
points > 65536, some form of decimation is required. The decimator used 
to produce a CSV record is configured to provide a best- estimate of all 
the samples that each point in the record represents. Therefore, the min 
and max values may not appear in the CSV file.