Embodiments of the present invention provide improved techniques for recovering clock information from data signals. In one embodiment, a general purpose device such as a real-time oscilloscope acquires a data signal. The device takes a derivative of the data signal, then computes the square or absolute of the derivative before applying a bandpass filter. The bandpass filter is a windowing function a spectrum that is wider than the clock, and has a flat top and smooth transitions on both sides. In one embodiment, at Tukey window may be used. The device finds edge crossing times of the filtered result, and applies a phase-locked loop or lowpass filter to the edge crossing times in order to recover a stable clock signal. When the improved techniques are implemented in software, they may be used with any number of different equalizers that are required by various high-speed serial data link systems.