Agilent DSO6034 -> MSO6034 via trial licence?

[madshaman]

Hi all.  Recently I broke down and purchased a used Agilent DSO6034 at a decent price because I wanted a "modern" stand alone DSO and I wanted a really good one.  It has no installed licenses.

I'm super pleased with it as it is, it functions perfectly and imo, it's a *really* nice scope and using it feels practically like having an analog scope without the weight and the bulk.

I've heard that you can install trial licences for every option and just keep rolling the system date back to keep them.

I haven't gotten the guts to request the trial licenses from Agilent yet and have a few questions:

1) Has anyone done this themselves?  What's been your experience?  Does rolling back the system clock actually work?

2) Is there any way I could hack the scope so I wouldn't have to roll back the clock?

3) For now I'm mainly interested in the MSO upgrade, any suggestions for acquiring the logic cable kit without breaking the bank?  Is there some older HP/Agilent equipment I could nab the same hardware from off of eBay or something?

4) Am I being too greedy?  I already have a 200Mhz usb mso with good specs and that works well, but I HATE the software and I hate that it's tied to my lab computer.  I'm also no longer a hobbyist as electronics now provides me with income, but I simply do NOT have the budget to purchase upgrades from Agilent at their full price.  I used to have this dilemma with software when I was younger and would gleefully use pirated versions of mathematica etc. with the intention of buying a real license when I could afford (and I DID follow through on this once I had real money for *every* piece of software I use).  This is kind of a moral grey area for me and would appreciate opinions pro and con.

5) Is there anything else I should know about my new baby in terms of hackability or in terms of problems I might encounter from keeping my system clock rolled back?

6) Will Agilent get suspicious when I request trial licences for every possible upgrade and then never make a purchase?  Will the black helicopters come for me?

Thanks in advance.

[eurofox]

Will the black helicopters come for me?

NSA is already watching you 

[echen1024]

Will the black helicopters come for me?

NSA is already watching you 

That is true.
Also, Agilent generally does not target the hobbyist market, so there probably is no division to handle these cases, and the people who do buy licenses will actually pay for them. In other words, I don't think they care.

[madshaman]

Will the black helicopters come for me?

NSA is already watching you 

That is true.
Also, Agilent generally does not target the hobbyist market, so there probably is no division to handle these cases, and the people who do buy licenses will actually pay for them. In other words, I don't think they care.

I wouldn't think so either, but some companies can be a bit aggressive when it comes to licensing.  Also, I do earn income from my lab so it's not completely cut and dried.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Hi all.  Recently I broke down and purchased a used Agilent DSO6034 at a decent price because I wanted a "modern" stand alone DSO and I wanted a really good one.  It has no installed licenses.

I'm super pleased with it as it is, it functions perfectly and imo, it's a *really* nice scope and using it feels practically like having an analog scope without the weight and the bulk.

I've heard that you can install trial licences for every option and just keep rolling the system date back to keep them.

I haven't gotten the guts to request the trial licenses from Agilent yet and have a few questions:

1) Has anyone done this themselves?  What's been your experience?  Does rolling back the system clock actually work?

Yes, on 2 scopes. If it does run out you can justroll back and  reinstall. The only date in the license is an expiry date, not a start.

2) Is there any way I could hack the scope so I wouldn't have to roll back the clock?

Why bother? You can roll back to 2001 so not likely to run out.  Just print a copy of the license strings and stick them in the testlead compartment for safe keeping.

3) For now I'm mainly interested in the MSO upgrade, any suggestions for acquiring the logic cable kit without breaking the bank?  Is there some older HP/Agilent equipment I could nab the same hardware from off of eBay or something?

yes - 1650/51 cables work, and I think any logic analyser since. You can sometimes find 1650/51's very cheap, but check they have the cables.

5) Is there anything else I should know about my new baby in terms of hackability or in terms of problems I might encounter from keeping my system clock rolled back?

No. It really is that simple.

6) Will Agilent get suspicious when I request trial licences for every possible upgrade and then never make a purchase?  Will the black helicopters come for me?

No (IME) It's a web auto-responder - all you need is a real email address. I  was rather surprised  that there is no sales follow up I used a genuine email and street address.
There are NO terms and conditions with the license request (or when you bought the scope), so it is nothing stating that you're not allowed to roll back to extend the trial.
My advice would be to get all options available, regardless of what you may or may not need now, as at some point they may disappear. Especially with the upcoming Agilent name-change as there may be a website revamp, and things like trials for obsolete gear may get 'tidied' away.

The only minor catch is the really good stuff like serial/I2C/SPI is only supported on 4 channel scopes - You can request trials for the 2-channels ones but they don't work (even on 2-channel MSOs).

[madshaman]

Thank-you Mike for answering all my questions so well!

And yeah, part of my concern was avoiding the dreaded follow-up sales hounding and associated quasi-guilt :-)

[ivaylo]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Agilent-54620-61801-54620-61601-54620-68701-POD-KIT-/121177656516?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c36c04cc4

[madshaman]

I'm sad to report failure.

I applied for a number of licenses.  Upgraded my 6034A's software to:

sys: 06.16.0001
lib: 02.25
gfs: 02.19

So far, every license I entered successfully activated the given feature except for MSO!!!

Installed successfully: LSS, AMS (will try all others)

When I enter the license for MSO (yes I checked 0 for O and 1 for I or l errors), tried a number of times.  I keep getting the: Invalid License Key error.

I'm kinda disappointed.  Anyone have a clue why this one license doesn't seem to work?

[madshaman]

Maybe I can hack the firmware image?  Is it encrypted (almost a dealbreaker) ?  Does it do a self checksum/sha1/whatever ?  Any magic numbers need to be right ?

Anyone think it would be difficult to get info on main entry point, object file format ?

[mikeselectricstuff]

Maybe I can hack the firmware image?  Is it encrypted (almost a dealbreaker) ?  Does it do a self checksum/sha1/whatever ?  Any magic numbers need to be right ?

Anyone think it would be difficult to get info on main entry point, object file format ?

Firmware files seem to be a weird packed format - maybe vxworks specific. I have a feeling the architecture is PowerPc based but can't remember how I came to that conclusion.

Not sure about the MSO trial not working - if they offer it, it ought to work, although you can request serial decode licenses for 2-channel scopes which also don't work so maybe their system has some issues. You could always try emailing them about it...
 

[madshaman]

Maybe I can hack the firmware image?  Is it encrypted (almost a dealbreaker) ?  Does it do a self checksum/sha1/whatever ?  Any magic numbers need to be right ?

Anyone think it would be difficult to get info on main entry point, object file format ?

Firmware files seem to be a weird packed format - maybe vxworks specific. I have a feeling the architecture is PowerPc based but can't remember how I came to that conclusion.

Not sure about the MSO trial not working - if they offer it, it ought to work, although you can request serial decode licenses for 2-channel scopes which also don't work so maybe their system has some issues. You could always try emailing them about it...

Thanks for the pointers.  I've never worked with vxworks before but used to do some ppc assembly.

Worst case scenario is that they used Java for development (would like to avoid hacking Java byte code), but have a sinking feeling they probably did.

I'm no stranger to RE-ing object file formats, doing disassembly etc. (I've had to fix broken libraries where the source is no longer available and/or splice such libraries into new operating environments) and I'm hoping that code written to run on high-end test instruments is a lot less sophisticated security/obfuscation-wise than I'm used to (one library I had to fix was a video codec which wrote it's own code into an executeable page and self modified that code without taking the necessary cache/pipeline steps, it was working by luck until the pentium IV came out and the luck ran out because the CPU started executing stale instructions.  Luckily we had their debug library, and this obfuscation nonsense was not compiled in so the debug version of the offending function could be spliced into the release library, where it performed more than well enough).

I bought the scope without any intention of hacking it, so I really shouldn't be so obsessed with this, but now it's about something standing in the way...

The scope is still in calibration and works beautifully so I'm not going to risk bricking it just yet.  Instead, I hope I can find the routine which verifies the license keys so that I can make a keygen.

I did register my scope with Agilent and I contacted them via the "extend my license" request one's offered if one tries to get a license key again for the same device, briefly explaining the problem; no response as yet.

I'm still pretty happy have to have all the other options, especially serial decode.