Agilent 54831D modernising

[Tony_G]

I think there might be a recovery image in my OneDrive folder:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Amqar8_XQ9Uzj6YhN1xHdM8tQdKMOA

Go to "...\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\5483x" and check out the iso.

TonyG

[croma641]

Thanks, Tony_G, but it's a W98 image..

[bigeblis]

Hi guys,

Tell me please.I appeal to you for advice.
How to properly install Windows XP 32bit, On devices  Agilent 5483xx and 5485xx ?
For devices Agilent 5483xx and 5485xx, Need only English version of Windows XP 32bit ?
At the moment I have a problem with installing drivers for Agilent 5485xx.

Thank all in advance.

According to the results of my experiments, I installed the operating system, drivers, and application software myself and could not work properly. Don't know what Agilent does to the system!

[PnpNpn]

At you what at the moment problem?
Your device works ?

According to the results of my experiments, I installed the operating system, drivers, and application software myself and could not work properly. Don't know what Agilent does to the system!

[magore]

You can do a clean install of Windows 7 SP1 on a new motherboard.
( FYI I have a 54831b  - I modified my case cutting out the IO shield )

I ended up extracting all of the HKLM infiniium registry keys and classes from the HKLM part of the registry including parts relating to agilient services. This was done first on a fully updated Windows XP system with V571 of the Infiniium software and latest IO libries.
I got the original INF files from the recovery partition and edited them so they would look in the current directory for drivers.
Look for:       1 = %DiskId1%,,,""
Change it to:   1 = ,,,"

FYI I got the sys and dll drivers from the updated XP windows sub folders. I placed these in a single folder a copied them to the Windows 7 SP1 new install motherboard using a Intel B75 based chipset

adobe.inf   ( Acquisition board )
adobe.sys
agBridge.inf
agBridge.sys
agt357.inf
agt82341.sys
agt82350.sys ( GPIB)
agt82357.sys
agtgpibclass.dll 
agtgpibclass_pci.dll
agtgpib.inf
mesa.inf    ( this is the main interface )
Mesa.sys   
tstone.inf
tstone.sys
zeum.inf    (  memory interface )
zeum.sys   

Using Microsoft Sysinternal Utilities I open a command prompt running as System. I launched regedit and imported the registry data exported from the XP machine. There are regisry parts that do not get created if we just install drivers - for eample the Infiniium Main interface is not created by installing a driver so the import of the XP infiniium registry keys fixes this. Services related keys make sure services are started, etc

Once 7 SP1 was installed on the new motherboard I had to do all of the updates before the scope application would fully work - ie 186 plus updates ( I had tried it before all updates were installed ) FYI - you have to give the system time to boot up.

I Installed the V571 and 17.1 version of the IO Libraries
I then manually installed each driver picking the option to browse specifically for the driver and picking have disk.
Main interface, Acquisition Board, and 4 copies for the memory controller. I did them in sequence of the driver properties Device Instance number ending in 103010f0 for the first one, the first digit changes 1,3,5,7 for each board. It will warn about the lack of driver signing.

I ended up using a P8B75-M but also worked with a P5DL-M.
I never considered using the CHIP and Tecnoligy board pair - never tried them.
Using the P8B75-M board required me to extend the length of the cable to the acquisition board - the P5DL-M board does not need this change

Durring the experiments to get this to work I tried ever incresing ammounts of the saved registry from the XP machine.

At some point when I get more time and recover from this I will try to repeat this on a clean install and fully document it. It took me a few weekends and late nights. I used the Sysinternals Process monitor to track registry and file access for clues. I would not have been able to do this without all of the work done previously by forum members in this thread - thanks!

[Howardlong]

One problem I had with upgrading the mobo was that in certain modes the scope app would give incorrect results or crashed: ISTR it was in equivalent time sampling mode and/or delayed timebase.

On another subject, a couple of months ago out of nowhere, I found that the unit started rebooting itself part way through the scope app initialisation when the relays click away. I assume there'll be a cap or two that need replacing on the acquisition board. As I've been in the moving process, after a cursory internal examination including checking the main PSU was OK, that's been put on the back burner.

[SilverSolder]

Does the ADC/GPIB card fit in the slots of the P8B75-M or do you need some kind of slot adaptor?

[magore]

I only used the GPIB and PCI extension board - the P8B75-M has two PCI slots and the P5QL has three
I am not using the original LCD - I replaced it with an 8" mounting it to the original metal bezal from the original display.

[magore]

I have not had problems yet - but I would guess  PCI bus timing could contribute to stablity issues.
I am actually suprized this all works using drivers designed for XP era hardware on an I5-3470T CPU

[magore]

I added two screen shots of my updated 8" 1024x768 screen running windows 7 on an I5-3470T CPU

[magore]

Hi,
 It might be a good idea to make sure the assigned memory space for the acquisition card can not be assigned to virtual memory. One simple fix may just be to set the registry option to keep all of the Windows kernel locked in ram - (windows lets some of itself swap out). Another issue to check is if any device uses IRQ's that are shared between a device on the PCI slots and another motherboard resource - Likely only the GPIP board.. I will look at that shortly. Older drives did not like shared PCI IRQ's... PS. I am thankful for all of the work you did because when I did my conversion I was able to skip a number of the things you already tried - it is clear you knew what you were doing - so made a guess the registry was the only likley remaining isuue based on your notes.

[Howardlong]

As I mentioned earlier, check that equivalent time sampling works consistently, I went over my notes and that was the problem I was unable to solve.

[magore]

Hi, I am not having issues with equivalent time sampling. Are there any settings that you recall made the problem more obvious ? How long did it general take to fail.
In the mean time I will continue to do more tests
Thanks for your input
FYI - I have read all of your posts - so I mean anything you haven't yet mentioned wwt equivalent time sampling

[SilverSolder]

Is there anything about the Agilent scope application that limits the screen resolution to 1024x768,  or would it be possible to use even higher resolution e.g. on an external monitor?

[Howardlong]

Is there anything about the Agilent scope application that limits the screen resolution to 1024x768,  or would it be possible to use even higher resolution e.g. on an external monitor?

It's hard-designed to either 640x480 (C&T VGA overlay 5483x series) or 1024x768 (integrated graphics 8000A series).

As far as I was able to tell, if it sees the C&T VGA overlay card it runs at 640x480, otherwise it uses 1024x768.

This was with the latest supported 5.71 Infiniium software.

[Howardlong]

Hi, I am not having issues with equivalent time sampling. Are there any settings that you recall made the problem more obvious ? How long did it general take to fail.
In the mean time I will continue to do more tests
Thanks for your input
FYI - I have read all of your posts - so I mean anything you haven't yet mentioned wwt equivalent time sampling

Not that I remember! (Edit: as well as ETS, check delayed trace also works consistently)

The eqv sampling thing was weird, it would work sometimes but not others.

As I understand it you've successfully manged to figure out how to do this with a clean W7 install, which is a feat by itself. I gave up on that route myself, I couldn't get all the hardware to work unless I did updates in place via Vista: a very tedious process when you've done it a few times!

I am assuming when it's running at 1024x768 you're using integrated graphics. What flat panel and graphics card w/lcd interface did you use, or did you use an HDMI/DVI/VGA -> LVDS LCD interface board? Do you have touch on it too?

FWIW, I have an MSO8104A on its way to me at the moment.

(edit: I assume yours is now identifying as an 8000A series?)

[magore]

Hi,
   I used a P8B75-M motherboard with integrated grapics - I connect the video on the motherboard to a controller attached to a EJ080NA-04C LCD - I use 40pin 0.5mm externder to reach into the cassis. I have the the controller mounted where the drive used to mount. I will type up more info  this evening.  I will try to put some documenation together this weekend for you. 
So basically I have a short external video jumper that attaches the video card to the external video connector.

[magore]

Hi,
 You asked about the model number displayed - on my machine the Model Number is blank in the agScope.exe application help menu.

[magore]

WOW - Good News - Windows 10 32bit works on the 54831b !!!!
I updated a copy of my working of Windows 7 SP1 image (which runs on the P8B75-M installed ) to Windows 10 32 bit to see if it worked. It does! I just had to reinatall the mesa.sys driver - no other tweaks required. ( I had been working on a clean install of 10 as of last night - I was having some problems with the filter drivers so I thought I would test the upgrade process to help determine if it can work - it does  )
This means a clean install of Windows 10 may be possible. (My Windows 7 SP1 copy was a clean install with imported registry components from the orginal XP install to get it working ) I have started working on finishing the clean install now  - the only dificulty I have had so far is instaling the pci filter bridge driver that works with the 4 memory interfaces and acquisition board. The current installation software under C:\pcidriver tosses error. The good news is just creates registry entries - they can be imported by hand if required.

I am now going to focus all my attention on documenting the clean install process for Windows 10
( FYI All Windows 7 systems can be updated and activated still (!)  by running the latest Windows 10 setup from you r running Windows 7 system. Your Windows 7 system must have all updates applied before you try.  You must manually start - or restart - the windows installer service priror to doing this ( services.msc -> Windows Inetaller Service -> Start )
I am quite sure this will also work on most Intel B75 series motherboards.

There Screen shot below is the agscope application running on WIndows 10 with the Windows 10 properties dialog box displayed - on an external monitor.

[SilverSolder]

Nice job, you're cookin' on gas!    But - won't Windows 10 be a problem on a scope that may not be network connected at all times - given how Win10 likes to update itself constantly?  -  or have you found a way to calm that aspect down?

Maybe this application qualifies as embedded use, so it becomes possible to buy a legitimate copy of Win 10 LTSC ?

[magore]

Windows 10 Clean install works! – What follows is a  very short summary – I need to do one more install attampt to reduce the number of steps to a minimum. But I thought I would share the basic summary of what I do know currently. For the Clean install we only need a tiny bit of registry from the updated original XP install. The V571 scope software was a bit of a pain to install but I worked out the details. I only finished this late last night after three days straight. - today I took a break ! There is still some uncertainty in which software steps I did that are actually required. Until I repeat this. At least I made a full backup of windows 10 just before doing the software install so I can redo this. ( I use clonezilla for this as backup - I have PXE boot server with clonezilla and some linux live image on it so I can netboot the machine into clonezilla )

Basically I installed the IO Library Suite ( very latest version from 2019 - reminder I am using a P8B75-M motherboard  so this works) The 1.6.4 IVI drivers. (optional)  I restarted between all installs. This gets the  GPIB card setup automatically. I manually installed the mesa (Agilent Main)  along with a bit of registry, adobe (acquisition) and zeum (memory) drivers - just as I did with Windows 7.  I then installed the V571 software and ran into problems – it complained about returning borrowed licenses ( Confused - I did not have any! ). Now during my Windows 7 test I had installed the V2 FLEXLM license manager thinking it was needed to create a few keys or folders s ( so I tried that – no change – removed it all – used the license server docs for correct install/removal steps ) – I now know they are NOT needed (There is only one required registry key pointing to  \scope\bin\license.dat – FYI your old license does not work as the hostid changes – others have solved that issue dcoumented elsewhere ) everything now is handled inside the v571 software itself. Fun fact the agscope.sys bridge driver is no longer required at all ( it got removed automatically in the Windows 7 to Window 10 test I did previously - along with all traces of the BRIDGE_FILTER registry keys). This is a new Windows 10 feature in the handling of filter drivers. The older postsysprep.bat and related programs are no longer needed (trivia – the tools in the pcifilter folder were parts of a Ziff David "Magic of Windows" program library from back in the Windows 98/2K days)

During my V571 install I also had a problem with the Matlab 7.50 installed component. Along the way in trying to resolve the borrowed license issue I tried installing V421, V510 and finally 571 in sequence. (Likely not needed - was originally not sure if they update mesa,adobe and zeum )  I decided to open a command prompt, in  Administrator mode, and run the V571 installer with /? - just to examine install flag options for V571 – ( V571 is actually several programs – once run they expand in to the users Appdata/Local/Temp folder ) I ended up running the installer from the command line without options. It stuck on the Matlab 7.50 install saying it could not write a log file. I manually copied the extracted Matlab 7.50 msi package out of the Appdata/Local/Temp folder (While the V571 software was still extracting ) – I could then install that msi jfile ust fine manually. Lastly I found the return borrow license problem was now absent when the installer was run for the Administrator Command prompt. I think it would have worked fine if I did the install from the prompt originally all except for the Matlab issue . – I think that UAC was involved in this behavior, certainly running it from and Administrator Level command prompt was what made it behave differently ( ie then right clicking the exe installer via explorer and saying run as administrator.)

More to follow - need a few days to rest. I feel like a dog with bone on this project. Lots of fun. Thanks Howardlong - and others - I would not be here without your help.

[magore]

I am typing up a detailed set of instructions presently intended for those here with the required technical experience.
For the curious you only need these files: adobe.sys, mesa.sys, zeum.sys,  adobe.inf  mesa.inf, zeum.inf  (from recovery image) IOLibSuite_18_1_24715.exe, AgilentInfiniium-x86_1.6.4.0.msi (IVI drivers optional) SetupInfManuals05500001.exe , SetupInfiniium05710000.exe (from Agilents site) , two registry fragments grabbed from the the scope - 188 lines of registry related to mesa.sys and 10 lines related to flexlm license file location. That is it all you need for a Windows clean install!!!
Give me a few days and I will post it all.

[Howardlong]

FWIW, the MSO8104A turned up today. It's certainly a noticeably more slick experience compared to the 54831D, partly due to a better processor and mobo, probably the integrated graphics makes the waveform display more modern, with intensity grading that the 54831D lacked with its C&T VGA overlay board.

The touch part of the touch screen is meh, you still really need a mouse and keyboard.

Boot time is markedly faster, but the unit still has a rust drive, albeit SATA rather than PATA.

It's good enough that I don't feel the need to break the seals... for now, at any rate.

[SilverSolder]

It's good enough that I don't feel the need to break the seals... for now, at any rate.

Sounds like a worrying tendency to do electronics projects rather than messing with your tools? 
Surely not acceptable in the EEVblog forum! 

[Howardlong]

It's good enough that I don't feel the need to break the seals... for now, at any rate.

Sounds like a worrying tendency to do electronics projects rather than messing with your tools? 
Surely not acceptable in the EEVblog forum! 

It’s very early days!

On a usability note on anything on an EE bench that needs a keyboard and/or mouse, I very highly recommend an under-bench keyboard tray, leaving the bench itself clear.

You can buy them ready made, but nowadays I make my own custom trays using drawer slider runners from the DIY store.