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Reading Tektronix TDS5054B waveform in LabVIEW

Hi,

I'm using LabVIEW to read and analyze a number of waveforms previously stored in the hard drive of my Tektronix oscilloscope. At the moment, the only way I can do this is by converting the original waveform (internal scope format) to a LabVIEW waveform datatype resorting to the "Simple Get Waveform" VI. This VI, however, requires the oscilloscope to be turned on (i.e. , the "Instrument Handle In" terminal must be connected).

Basically, my main question is: is there a way to read this data type without neither having to have the oscilloscope on nor having to previously convert every single waveform to LabVIEW datatype?

I'm using a remote computer to run LabVIEW so I'd like to be able to transfer all the original data to its hard drive so I can run the analysis program then. I hope this is clear enough. Thank you for your time and help.

GB
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No matter what, your scope is going to have to be turned on. No power to the scope means no power to the disk drive, right? Transferring data from the scope to your pc is dependent on the scope. If the scope is the type where it's actually a pc running some version of windows, then you might be able to put it on a newtwork and access the hard drive directly. If the only way you can connect to the scope is with a gpib cable and you only have the scope commands to transfer from internal memory to the scop'es display, then you will have to continue the way you've been doing it. You haven't mentioned the scope model so it would help if you would include that information. You should also try contacting tek directly if you're unsure of the scope's capabilities.
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The scope is a Tektronix TDS5054B, and yes, it's a PC running Windows 2000. The scope is already on a network and I've been accessing it remotely by running LabVIEW on a different PC (main). What I'd like to be able to do is copy all the waveforms previously saved on the scope's HD to the main computer (not a problem) and then run these files through LabVIEW from the main computer - to save on processing time, mostly, but also so that the whole process is not scope-dependent. The problem is, none of the VI's provided by Tektronix seem to allow this, for the reasons I had already mentioned before.

Getting in touch with Tektronix actually sounds like a good idea, I might try that next if I don't get any other replies. Thanks for your help!
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You will have to write your own VI to do this. The Tek data format is probably described in the manual and it's probably used in one of the functions in the driver but unless you have LabWindows, you can't open the CVI source code (assuming that Tek has made that available). Reading a binary file in LabVIEW is not terribly difficult as long as you know the exact format and there are a couple of shipping examples. Also, I would suspect that Tek stores the data in little-endian format so you'll probably have to do some byte swapping to get it into LabVIEW big-endian format.
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I've found a Matlab function (link below) which does that conversion, it seems to work fine with the Matlab Script VI and hopefully things won't be slowing down too much as a result. Thanks a lot for your advice!

www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=6764&objectType=file
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