How do registers work for event or error handling on Tektronix oscilloscopes?

How do registers work for event or error handling on Tektronix oscilloscopes?

Registers are digital storage areas where information can be read or stored, or both.  There are 5 registers in your Tektronix scope, each register having 8 bits.   Three of the registers can be written to and read from the controller, two registers can only be read from the controller.

Status Registers

The two read-only registers are called status registers.  They contain the scope status information and make it available to the controller when asked.  Each of the 8 bits has a special meaning, so that the controller can tell what the status is.  For instance if the controller reads a value of 96 (i.e. binary %01100000) from a status register, it knows that bits 5 and 6 are set to 1 and all the others are still 0, so the controller can do some special task to fix those errors.

Enable Registers

The three read/write registers are the “filters” that limit the amount of information that the scope shows to the controller.  Each of the 8 bits can be “masked” to either pass information through, or to prevent it from passing.  A setting of 255 (binary %11111111) will enable all 8 bits and allow all the information to pass, but a setting of 1 (binary %00000001) will mask out all bits except bit 1.