LATE UPDATE; During the 'thought' process of connecting to my SA, I thought I¡¯d first take a peek with a 485-analog scope. Lo and behold, everything appeared to work as expected. The timing was as close as I could hope, and levels were very close. From the ¡®Marker Output¡¯ and from the ¡®Trigger Output¡¯, the marker signals and the trigger signals, all were there. This started a head-scratching session¡ I¡¯m assuming the bandwidth, of the HP 54542C, along with being digital simply shows more artifacts.
I appreciate that I¡¯m old school and have countless more hours on analog scopes, so I¡¯m still getting used to the 54542C along with various Rigol jobbies I have. I understand, er, at least hope I understand the reason why digital scopes show more ¡®fuzz¡¯ on the screen than the smooth trace of an analog scope, and I¡¯m assuming the detail I was seeing is related. Just a character of the ¡®Type¡¯ of oscilloscope.
At any rate, things look great on any analog scope I have, e.g. from 7000 series, 2000 series, or 400 series, the marker tics all look just as expected. On the flip side, all my digital jobs show the noise. So, I think I¡¯ll sit down with a cup-o-joe and catch up on how analog vs digital scopes differ (again). If anyone has thoughts about this I¡¯m very open to learning ~!~
Michael - AF7U