Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...

[joeqsmith]

I've had this DSO for a while and had it apart once before to see if I could find a problem with a dead channel.  I had installed the latest software at that time cleaned up the drive.    The system boots really slow and the hard drive was always active.   Came with 256M of RAM.        So today it's coming back apart for a little TLC.


This is my forth LeCroy DSO and also my newest.   I also have an early 7200 68000 VME from the USAF, a 7200A that came from IOMega, my 8500A.   

The 64xi is not even close to the quality of these systems.   Not sure why they would want to start marketing such low end equipment.  The price for this system is still over 10K, so not seeing it competing with the real low end systems.   I would love to see how the top end Rigol DSO compares with my 30 year collection.   

 

 

[joeqsmith]

I was walking with the 64xi and some of the knobs fell off.     I started looking and about half of them were super loose.   LeCroy sent me some new knobs and these are very tight.    The vertical and horizontal knobs are supposed to be larger.  Waiting for those two knobs to show up.

My 7200 has an end cap on the knobs that you first remove, then you remove a set screw that holds the knobs on. 

[joeqsmith]

Here are a few from the sides and back.

[joeqsmith]

I want to replace the hard drive.   To do this, you have to pull this cover.  Of course it's all plastic.  Self tapping screws.  There was some damage already to one of the posts.  I know this system has been in for service at least twice in its short life.   

No shock mounts, just bolted to the case.   Maybe this thing is not meant to ever be moved off the bench. 

[dom0]

Well it's a 2.5" notebook drive (apparently) and those are meant to resist shock and transportation w/o shock dampeners.

[joeqsmith]

Looking at the main acquisition board, get ready for it.....

You have to remove all those covers and the plate over the BNCs to get to this one screw under the main heatsink.   

[joeqsmith]

Under the cover holding the drive.  Upper right plastic standoff is damaged.   Looks like the tape has started to lift.

Actually, it's pretty much  held together with tape.   Maybe their hold stock in 3M.

[joeqsmith]

I am not sure why, but the two main cables going to the DAQ are hot glued in place.  These are the only two.  I had remelted these last time I had it apart.

With the DAQ pulled, you can see the channel 3 connector.   This has actually been fine since I put it back together last time so I plan to leave this together.

[joeqsmith]

These were some of the pictures I took last time I had the DAQ apart.   

[joeqsmith]

Once the DAQ is pulled, there is another cover that must be removed to get to the CPU board.   That's a lot of screws to add some RAM and change the battery.   

[tautech]

Case is all plastic.  Of course, it has some chips and cracks.   My old 7200 is all metal.

I don't think anybody in their right mind would want a metal cased scope these days.

My 7200 has an end cap on the knobs that you first remove, then you remove a set screw that holds the knobs on.

And the set screws are a point of contact to the operator should he/her ever decide to "float" the scope.
Assuming metal pot spindle of course. 

[joeqsmith]

There is only one memory slot.  I picked up a 1G stick for it.   It can't hurt.

Battery replaced, RAM installed, DAQ back in the chassis. 

[joeqsmith]

Had replaced the drive on the 8500A with an SSD.  It's been working very well.   I had bought two different ones to try.  One SATA one PATA.   The SATA with adapter went in the 8500A, the PATA is going into this system.  Different brand, we will see.

Imaged the original first then did the transfer.

[joeqsmith]

Put the new SSD into the system and turned it on.  Boots fast.   

[joeqsmith]

Left over parts...   This is the screw that was in the broken standoff.   Used a longer self tapping screw to make sure this one was not going to fall out.   

[joeqsmith]

Back together and powering it up for checkout.   

No worse for wear anyway.  All four channels survived.   I may try and find an original cover for it. 

[digsys]

Thanks for the teardown and pix. I have a collection of old LeCroys as well, but just too lazy to fix the minor faults :-)
Both my 9424 and 9354 have a lot of metal and are damn heavy, easy to get into though. Still, I'd prefer a a much lighter plastic version
next time.

[Hydrawerk]

These wires were placed in the factory or during a repair??

[digsys]

  These wires were placed in the factory or during a repair?? 

I'd say definitely from a repair. Factory mods are usually very neat with much lighter, high grade wire. We used to use wire-wrap wire.

[joeqsmith]

There was another picture of the same wire being used.   If it was a repair, it was done at the factory.   I have attached a different, larger picture of this area.

This thing now has waveforms being displayed in 1 minute 5 seconds after power up.      It no longer stalls when I am running it.  Just very smooth as I would expect it would be.    4X more memory seems to have made a big improvement.   

[joeqsmith]

Running interlaced mode (10Gs/s), channel 2 (red) with a 800MHz signal.   Channel 3 (blue) with a 500MHz signal. 

[joeqsmith]

Showing the two channels looking at the rising edge of an ECL signal.  This is the same signal, same coax. 

[Wuerstchenhund]

Had replaced the drive on the 8500A with an SSD.  It's been working very well.   I had bought two different ones to try.  One SATA one PATA.   The SATA with adapter went in the 8500A, the PATA is going into this system.  Different brand, we will see.

Just be careful with SSDs in that scope, as they tend to suffer from file system corruption (I tried several ones, including the Transcend PATA SSD on your picture), and all suffered from the same problem.

The reason seems to be that the SSDs only really support UDMA modes, which for PATA requires a 80 conductor cable to work reliably. The scope however uses a 44pin cable (there are no 84 conductor cables, at least I'm not aware of them) which is not really suited for UDMA66 or faster modes. Another forum user (Tunersandwich) who has the same scope made the same experience, he also tried a SSHD but that was a no-go either.

In the end I went back to spinning rust, i.e. a modern fast SATA laptop drive connected through a cheap SATA-PATA bridge. Works fine and absolutely reliable.

$7350 for the Rigol DS6064 or $9660 for the DS6104.  I assume this is the market LeCroy is going after.   

Not really. The WaveRunner Series starts quite a bit above that.

The WaveSurfer 3000 is the one that competes with the Rigol DS6000 scopes, although no-one really buys them anyways due to their poor value for money.

[tautech]

Had replaced the drive on the 8500A with an SSD.  It's been working very well.   I had bought two different ones to try.  One SATA one PATA.   The SATA with adapter went in the 8500A, the PATA is going into this system.  Different brand, we will see.

Just be careful with SSDs in that scope, as they tend to suffer from file system corruption (I tried several ones, including the Transcend PATA SSD on your picture), and all suffered from the same problem.

The reason seems to be that the SSDs only really support UDMA modes, which for PATA requires a 80 conductor cable to work reliably. The scope however uses a 44pin cable (there are no 84 conductor cables, at least I'm not aware of them) which is not really suited for UDMA66 or faster modes. Another forum user (Tunersandwich) who has the same scope made the same experience, he also tried a SSHD but that was a no-go either.

In the end I went back to spinning rust, i.e. a modern fast SATA laptop drive connected through a cheap SATA-PATA bridge. Works fine and absolutely reliable.

Hmmm, IME the 80 conductor cable has an inactive conductor between each active on to reduce crosstalk and they were quite available in the days of IDE.

SSD management might be the other problem, OS's have "switches" than can be enabled to help lengthen the life of SSD's. Auto Defrag should be off, wear leveling on, etc.

Sevenforums had a lot of info about this when SSD's came out, but whether the scope OS has the updates to fully support SSD's   

[Wuerstchenhund]

Hmmm, IME the 80 conductor cable has an inactive conductor between each active on to reduce crosstalk

Correct.

and they were quite available in the days of IDE.

Yes, for desktop IDE components (which used a 40pin connector). But not for the much narrower 44pin variant used for laptop drives. The main reason is that laptops rarely use cables to connect to hard disks but direct connectors.

SSD management might be the other problem, OS's have "switches" than can be enabled to help lengthen the life of SSD's. Auto Defrag should be off, wear leveling on, etc.

Windows XP (which is what the scope runs) doesn't support trim so it is dependent on the SSD's wear leveling (which is always on btw). Over-provisioning (i.e. not using the full capacity of the SSD) helps.

Background defrag should be off as it's useless on a SSD anyways.

Sevenforums had a lot of info about this when SSD's came out, but whether the scope OS has the updates to fully support SSD's   

There are no updates. Windows versions before Win 7 do not support SSDs, period. It doesn't mean they can't run on SSDs but there are some things to look out for.