EEVblog 1720 - Mailbag: USSR Bonanza + Logic Training + $69 Logic Analyzer

[EEVblog]

More mailbag!

00:00 - Biggest mailbag load EVER. Too much random vintage USSR stuff to list...
26:24 - Logicgat Digital Logic training board.
https://logicgat.es/
31:22 - SLogic16U3 $69 USB3 800MHz Logic Analyser
https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/logic_analyzer/slogic16u3/Introduction.html

[golden_labels]

Parts marked as РЗС… and РПС… are miniature relays.

The coin commemorates, translating it directly, “20th anniversary of the victory over fascist Germany” (XX лет победы над фащистскои германиеи).

I don’t know what РТ-40/10Ч4 is, but searching suggests it may be an old overcurrent protection.

The socket may be a curiosity: a Soviet-produced Australian outlet. The ceramic part is likely only for insulation — it was a common material in older sockets.

It’s sad, that both sound effects didn’t make it through. Unlike the assortment of more or less interesting products, it is personal: somebody had to put effort into building all this, hoping to make you smile. And it all got destroyed.

[reagle]

That coin is 1 ruble

[ledtester]

An update on the logic analyzer would be nice if you can get it working.

[Whales]

That's a very unhappy logic analyser.  Very sad, was hoping to see how well it worked.

I use sigrok with a Cypress FX2 based logic analyser.  Works really well and is stupidly cheap (less than 10AUD).  Sigrok even uploads its own firmware to the boards when you connect it.  I have a few of them spare in case I blow one up, but so far no issues.

[wraper]

That SCR looks like Т153, it should had marking on the insulator which appears to he erased. Depending on grade, rated for 630-2500A and up to 2.8kV. Here's a picture of one mounted to a heatsink. I can assure you it's larger than it looks. I once had its smaller cousin T143 with a heatsink and it was large and heavy as hell. I also had one Т153 but it was standalone.

[Rasz]

I had high hopes for that sipeed LA - Im looking for cheap 2-3 channels @200Msps LA to recommend for https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk. Seeing they dont have dedicated USB controller on board maybe its their FPGA USB3 implementation not loving your particular computer/chipset.

They have to ship own version of Sigrok/PulseView because official project is dying Website often goes offline for weeks, there are no active maintainers and the people left with commit access either dont have hardware for testing, skills or time. https://sourceforge.net/p/sigrok/mailman/message/59244418/

Result is untouched pull requests going back to 2019, no new hardware support, no driver updates merged, no new decoders nor decoder updates.

Thats why for example DreamSourceLab forked whole thing into DSView https://github.com/DreamSourceLab/DSView except tehy made some stupid changes making it unusable for me, like zooming out stops displaying Decoder output replacing it with "zoom in for details" like WTF. Plus they commited typical corporate burning bridges bullshit by removing import support completely making software unusable without DSLogic hardware (maaaybe justified? but its open source so ..), and gutted export options to csv only.

[jakob_]

DreamSourceLab released their own fork not because of merging/maintenance issues, but because they initially lied about it being based on sigrok, removed all references to it and didn't want to disclose the source.
Sipeed at least created a PR for drivers.

[dmsc]

I don't understand.... he set 1M samples/s and 10k samples, this is 10ms of total sampling, so it is expected that 10ms after pressing the button the capture stops - just as it is shown in the video.

He should have set at minimum 1G samples to be able to see the capture at real time.

[jakob_]

Could be that the samples at 0ms are just barely out of view, and PulseView didn't auto zoom for some reason.
Just drag or press zoom to fit, and 1M is enough to be visible.

[thm_w]

Is the SLogic32U3 released? That one looks good too: https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/logic_analyzer/slogic16u3/Introduction.html 1.5GHz and some mention of an ADC input.

A few responses by the designer here: https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/11/12/69-sipeed-slogic16u3-low-cost-logic-analyzer-supports-3-2-gbps-bandwidth-150-protocols/

I don't understand.... he set 1M samples/s and 10k samples, this is 10ms of total sampling, so it is expected that 10ms after pressing the button the capture stops - just as it is shown in the video.

As mentioned above, he's used to saleae where they will auto zoom, so hitting run and seeing nothing on the screen is confusing.

[seb_m]

From the video, it looks like you executed the LA software directly from the archive.

Did you try to unzip it to a folder and then execute it from there?

I'm curious to see it work.

[thm_w]

From the video, it looks like you executed the LA software directly from the archive.

Did you try to unzip it to a folder and then execute it from there?

He did unzip it first. Would also like to see it working.

It sounds like some combination of either a poorly written driver and maybe general sigrok windows drivers issues.

[EEVblog]

From the video, it looks like you executed the LA software directly from the archive.

I didn't, that was only on screen to show the files.
Even time I used it it was from the unzipped directory.

[EEVblog]

I don't understand.... he set 1M samples/s and 10k samples, this is 10ms of total sampling, so it is expected that 10ms after pressing the button the capture stops - just as it is shown in the video.

As mentioned above, he's used to saleae where they will auto zoom, so hitting run and seeing nothing on the screen is confusing.

If that's the case then the software is terrible. Of course it should automatically fill the screen based on your settings before you hit Run.

[EEVblog]

Could be that the samples at 0ms are just barely out of view, and PulseView didn't auto zoom for some reason.
Just drag or press zoom to fit, and 1M is enough to be visible.

Nicely spotted, I'll try it again.

[cgroen]

Crossing fingers for the logic analyzer, I ordered one a couple of weeks ago 
Have a Saleae Logic Pro 16 already, looking forward to compare the two (if the Sipeed one will fire up at all.....)

[jakob_]

Just received mine, here's an example capture of about 120Mhz and it auto fills the screen (using Linux).

[robca]

I'm seriously tempted to get the SLogic16U3 for $69. It won't be much of an update over my DsLogic U2Basic (updated to Pro), but just the coax probes to make my U2Basic like a real Pro would cost me half as much as the new LA

The main open question for me is the external clock input which seems disabled for now on the SLogic16U3. Can someone with the Sipeed analyzer try if the external clock works? For many projects, it's safer to sample using the external clock than setting a higher sample rate (it's one of the way I can run around the speed limitations of my DsLogic)

Also, can someone who owns it create a new thread with a mini-review? Right now, the Sipeed seems to be a much better choice than then DsLogic for hobbyists and given the open source nature of some parts of the project, might be useful to get some attention to it