EEVblog #591 - Agilent 54622D Retro Mixed Signal Osciloscope Review & Teardown

[EEVblog]

Dave checks out one of his favorite "old" oscilloscopes, the 2000 vintage Agilent 54622D mixed signal oscilloscope with the original megazoom ASIC technology and high resolution CRT display.
http://www.hit.bme.hu/~papay/edu/Lab/MegaZoom.pdf
http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5968-8152EN.pdf

[pickle9000]

So Dave what's the asking price?   

[EEVblog]

So Dave what's the asking price?   

No local price history on these in a long time. I sold my old work one about 5 years ago for $2400. Only paid the company $100 for it, suckers 

[EEVblog]

I was going to put it on ebay, but then realised that's probably not a good look after telling everyone to put it on their watchlist 

[EEVblog]

How many other 'scopes have you got to sell still?

This one, 3 Tek 3000's, and probably 15 or so TD220's in various states of distress.

[pickle9000]

I was going to put it on ebay, but then realised that's probably not a good look after telling everyone to put it on their watchlist 

Well you only sell the stuff in Australia so why not give some of the forum members the heads up and list it in a week or so. No matter what people will complain (about everything), I don't see it as an issue. How often do you get to see under the hood of an ebay item. From my perspective it's no different from buying a tshirt. If it helps keep the blogs coming then I say it's a good thing.

[Ketturi]

Speaking of scope screen resolution, when will those high resolution "retina" tablet displays come to scopes too? Yes it would need somewhat more processing speed, but waveform would like very crisp and and screen pixel layout would not interfere with it, no need for antialiasing.

Btw, would that used Agilent or similar one be better than these cheapest new DSOs for similar price? Yes older ones have less memory and bandwidth/sampling rate, but they looks to be much faster and better in the user interface side. What good is scope that promise the moon but are slow to use, display & UI is horrible and waveform looks crusty and jacked, no good for advanced signals. I ques good instruments age much better.
Edit: Well I obviously missed the end, where Dave said it would be worth

[KedasProbe]

Surprised to see such a relatively good analogue like scope view (on the AM signal)
To compare below my Hameg known for not being good in this area but a lot younger isn't even getting close:

[electronics man]

did i miss something, where were the ADC's

[marshallh]

Megazoom asics fabbed by Fujitsu

[Rutger]

They are listed on ebay for ~ $ 500 - $ 800. In that case they are not a good deal, you can get  a Rigol DS1074Z for $ 585 here in the US, that beats it by miles.

I like the vintage review, but when is Dave going to review the Rigol DS1000Z series, which in my option is a much better value for money scope.

[electronics man]

when is Dave going to review the Rigol DS1000Z series, which in my option is a much better value for money scope.

yeah Dave

[kevinpt]

I have seen them in good condition for $400 now and again. The key with the MSO versions is to find one that has the logic analyzer cable since they are often missing and the resellers gouge on them. The pods are shared with the other HP 40-pin LA cables so less of an issue there.

BTW I suspect that the gate array is handling the serial protocol trigger since that was new to these models compared to the 54645D.

Whatever you do Dave please don't get your hands on a LeCroy LT series since I'm waiting for the price to drop on those and a review would make them popular among the hobbyist crowd. That 9384 was a hunk of junk and all the other LeCroys are just as bad .

[Towger]

when is Dave going to review the Rigol DS1000Z series, which in my option is a much better value for money scope.

yeah Dave

I am also still waiting for the DS1000Z vs the the DS2000 series, there are a lot of different opinions over them. Even leaving out the obvious 2 vs 4 channels and cost.

[Hydrawerk]

Once I measured the waveform update rate of a similar Agilent scope.
EDIT: But it might be wrong for some reason (??). Probably an error in the external counter?

[Hydrawerk]

And then I made other videos.
XY mode

Asteroids game

Jumping letters

[EEVblog]

Once I measured the waveform update rate of a similar Agilent scope.

360Kwfms/sec, are you sure? I measured 500 or less.

[Hydrawerk]

Well, I am not too sure, and unfortunately I cannot measure it again, because that scope was built into a rack in the student's lab, so I cannot reach the Trig Out BNC any more.
But according to the datasheet this scope should be quite good at waveform update rate. There is  written

The MegaZoom deep memory is mapped into 32 levels of intensity on a display that has twice the horizontal resolution and update rates of up to 25 million vectors per second – so you see a more realistic representation of your signals.

This is on page 5 of the datasheet.

[Hydrawerk]

Once I measured the waveform update rate of a similar Agilent scope.

360Kwfms/sec, are you sure? I measured 500 or less.

You mean 500 wfms/sec or 500 000 wfms/sec?

[EEVblog]

You mean 500 wfms/sec or 500 000 wfms/sec?

500 wfms/sec, you can see the 500Hz figure on my scope in the video.

[EEVblog]

From my link before:
http://www.hit.bme.hu/~papay/edu/Lab/MegaZoom.pdf
Page 12:

Mega
Zoom
technology can deliver a maximum update rate of 7,800 waveforms per
second in the Infiniium 54830 Series oscilloscopes. In the 54640-series, the update
rate is maximum at 64,000 waveforms/second.

So that's the higher bandwidth 2GS/s 54640 models, not the 200MS/s models here.

[Hydrawerk]

:-( Uhh, I made some mistakes, just like this guy has made. http://www.ittsb.eu/GDS-2102A%20Wfms%20measurments.html
Maybe I can find another Agilent 546200 series scope and do the measurement again.
Well, thank you for clearing up this issue, in fact, I could hardly believe the 360 000 waveforms per second. It was quite high but still not unbelievable.

[adh]

The reason for specifing update rate in "vectors per second" and not waveforms/second is because LeCroy used to specify it in that way. For LeCroy scopes it made sense as they had real vector CRT's with update rate that depended on how complex screen content was.

[GBoos]

Hi Dave,

Agilent made their own optical Encoders, today you'll get them from AVAGO.
The Encoders look like HEDS-5700 without housing

[free_electron]

the encoders are not optical.
they are made by APEM if i remember correctly.