Author Topic: EEVblog #655 - Auction Score  (Read 50674 times)

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Offline Excavatoree

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #25 on: August 22, 2014, 12:24:15 pm »
why do you need so many repeat units?

More then two or three of anything is a total waste.
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #26 on: August 22, 2014, 12:41:32 pm »
why do you need so many repeat units?

More then two or three of anything is a total waste.
You can never have too many power supplies.
Or any other bit of testgear for that matter....
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Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #27 on: August 22, 2014, 12:42:44 pm »
You are going to teardown that scope i assume.. :D

Probably, but I have to be careful of course, it's worth a pretty penny on ebay...
Yes but something that old would surely benefit from a thorough clean-out... Maybe even replacing the HDD with a SSD
 
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Offline BravoV

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #28 on: August 22, 2014, 12:47:09 pm »
Maybe even replacing the HDD with a SSD

+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

Hopefully it will decrease the booting time significantly.

Offline Excavatoree

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #29 on: August 22, 2014, 01:02:12 pm »
You are going to teardown that scope i assume.. :D

Probably, but I have to be careful of course, it's worth a pretty penny on ebay...

There were some crappy ones for 1,000 to 2,000 dollars (US) but the going price for gear you can use seems to be 3000-4000 USD.  I'd guess they would do the equivalent of that well or better in Australia. 
 

Offline GBoos

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #30 on: August 22, 2014, 01:07:24 pm »
Hi Dave,

the  Infiniium Oscilloscope must be one of the first series. You can still see the start button of Win 98.
In later Versions it was hidden. So you will be able to play Minesweeper on your scope  ;) (I did it.)
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #31 on: August 22, 2014, 01:27:41 pm »
Maybe even replacing the HDD with a SSD

+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

Hopefully it will decrease the booting time significantly.
At the very least you should take an image backup of the drive. 
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #32 on: August 22, 2014, 01:44:26 pm »
+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

I be hard pressed to think of am ore boring video ;D , but it would be interesting to know how much it speeds up by.
 

Offline edpalmer42

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #33 on: August 22, 2014, 02:13:50 pm »
Maybe even replacing the HDD with a SSD

+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

Hopefully it will decrease the booting time significantly.

Will there be any complications in putting an SSD into such an old machine?  I'm thinking mainly of BIOS limitations that might prevent the thing from booting.

Ed
 

Offline synapsis

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #34 on: August 22, 2014, 02:21:14 pm »
The drive in it is probably Parallel ATA. Do they make PATA SSDs or adapters?
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #35 on: August 22, 2014, 02:22:55 pm »
The drive in it is probably Parallel ATA. Do they make PATA SSDs or adapters?
Possibly - may need to find an old one, but Compact flash is the same as IDE and you can definitely get IDE to CF adapters.
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Offline gudenau

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #36 on: August 22, 2014, 02:29:33 pm »
+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

I be hard pressed to think of am ore boring video ;D , but it would be interesting to know how much it speeds up by.
Just explain the exact process that all of the components use, and the boot procedure of the Windows box. Make sure you copy the data by hand for the extra boring factor. Btw, you made a typo!
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
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Offline Carrington

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #37 on: August 22, 2014, 02:42:57 pm »
@ EEVblog:

Maybe you can also replace the floppy drive by one of these (or similar):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-1-44MB-USB-SSD-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-for-YAMAHA-KORG-keyboard-GOTEK-white-/221471089971

My English can be pretty bad, so suggestions are welcome. ;)
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Offline Rasz

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #38 on: August 22, 2014, 03:37:54 pm »
The drive in it is probably Parallel ATA. Do they make PATA SSDs or adapters?
Possibly - may need to find an old one, but Compact flash is the same as IDE and you can definitely get IDE to CF adapters.

CF cards are terrible general hdd replacements, they dont have wear levelling and have abysmal random access / IOPS performance
they are ok'ish for bootstrapping custom linux, but you need to take special care not to write too much, and generally keep all the stuff in ramdisk.

cheapest/easiest solution (got one in my laptop) is :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/mSATA-SSD-to-44-Pin-IDE-Converter-Adapter-as-2-5-Inch-IDE-HDD-5-Volt-For-Laptop-/191196101500
http://www.ebay.com/itm/mSATA-mini-PCI-E-SATA-SSD-to-2-5-IDE-44pin-Notebook-Laptop-hard-disk-case-White-/380893918084
+ small mSATA SSD drive ( I got $25 32GB ADATA Sandforce one).

performance with that converter in older laptop:
Code: [Select]
           Sequential Read :    78.959 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    47.939 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :    78.622 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :    48.092 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :    19.962 MB/s [  4873.5 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :    33.953 MB/s [  8289.2 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :    22.456 MB/s [  5482.5 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :    42.393 MB/s [ 10349.9 IOPS]

Maybe you can also replace the floppy drive by one of these (or similar):

its not a floppy, but a LS120 drive (120MB custom medium). Its not using floppy connector, but IDE one (slave to the main hdd)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk

If anything, it would be worth adding USB 2.0 PCI controller card (motherboard of that era has USB 1.1) and put USB connector in place/next to LS120.

Upgrading CPU and ram should also be easy and cheap and should bump performance (at least booting, maybe math).

Cant wait for scope teardown. Wonder how its build inside. Is data touching cpu at any point (FFTs?) Is it a PCI card or all one one custom motherboard? is it all in asic? What does the display, also asic or normal GPU of the day?
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Offline Carrington

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #39 on: August 22, 2014, 04:00:42 pm »
Its not a floppy... Its not using floppy connector, but IDE one.
Thanks for the clarification.  :)
I thought it was a floppy drive.

From the datasheet:
Quote

120 MByte LS-120 SuperDisk floppy drive to store waveform data, screen images, or scope setups...
« Last Edit: August 22, 2014, 04:10:44 pm by Carrington »
My English can be pretty bad, so suggestions are welcome. ;)
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Offline plesa

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #40 on: August 22, 2014, 04:52:00 pm »
CF cards are terrible general hdd replacements, they dont have wear levelling and have abysmal random access / IOPS performance
they are ok'ish for bootstrapping custom linux, but you need to take special care not to write too much, and generally keep all the stuff in ramdisk.

Current CF cards has wear levelling, only quite old does not have it.
 

Offline krivx

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #41 on: August 22, 2014, 04:56:43 pm »
CF cards are terrible general hdd replacements, they dont have wear levelling and have abysmal random access / IOPS performance
they are ok'ish for bootstrapping custom linux, but you need to take special care not to write too much, and generally keep all the stuff in ramdisk.

Current CF cards has wear levelling, only quite old does not have it.

I would imagine that most flash memory applications are using the same memory controller ICs, so it make sense for nearly every flash memory device to support wear levelling by now.
 

Offline ryanmoore

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #42 on: August 22, 2014, 05:11:15 pm »
Maybe even replacing the HDD with a SSD

+1 , this process alone will be a really good material for a dedicated video it self.  :-+

Hopefully it will decrease the booting time significantly.

Will there be any complications in putting an SSD into such an old machine?  I'm thinking mainly of BIOS limitations that might prevent the thing from booting.

Ed

PCs of that vintage tend to have limits on the hard drive size for various historical reasons. 8GB or 32GB are the ones you run into most often, and the 32GB limit is very common on late 90s Award BIOSes (as the scope seems to have if I'm squinting at the screen correctly).
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #43 on: August 22, 2014, 05:33:33 pm »
Simple reason the bus mouse did not work is that it has to be plugged in at startup so that the windows kernel driver is loaded, as otherwise windows does not ever look again for one, and assumes a serial port mouse is there, or for later versions a USB one. That one still has a ball inside, I still have some PS2 mice around, and even one serial mouse.
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #44 on: August 22, 2014, 05:57:38 pm »
CF cards are terrible general hdd replacements, they dont have wear levelling and have abysmal random access / IOPS performance
they are ok'ish for bootstrapping custom linux, but you need to take special care not to write too much, and generally keep all the stuff in ramdisk.

Current CF cards has wear levelling, only quite old does not have it.

I would imagine that most flash memory applications are using the same memory controller ICs, so it make sense for nearly every flash memory device to support wear levelling by now.
In a scope I can't see that it would be writing to the disk very often, so probably not a big deal
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Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #45 on: August 22, 2014, 06:03:49 pm »
You just need enough memory and then you can run Win98 without a swap file. It will complain when you set it up, but so long as you have enough RAM and limit the applications that are open at any time ( and have no major memory leaks, but then again this is Win98 which falls over for this in any case after a few months) you can do it.
 

Offline Switching Power

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #46 on: August 22, 2014, 06:11:36 pm »
On my Infiniium Oscilloscope (54810A saved from a trip to the dumpster) i have put a bracket on the back for the build in USB ports and upgraded the RAM, CPU and even added an audio card because those scoops have a free software upgrade for voice recognition :P

Those scoops have a separate PCI acquisition card that write strait to the video frame buffer and use a little RAM disk to store your settings so the harddisk is only used during startup.

Also free_electron has posted some images of those scoops on the dutch forum circuitsonline
« Last Edit: August 22, 2014, 06:21:39 pm by Switching Power »
 

Offline Neilm

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #47 on: August 22, 2014, 06:23:02 pm »
Why is there a banana on the stack?
Obviously - this is the new banana plug   >:D
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Offline Lukas

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #48 on: August 22, 2014, 07:16:24 pm »
Concerning the infiniium scope, you may try the following:
Open up the start menu by pressing ctrl-esc, launch paint and start drawing with the colour 10, 9, 9 (r,g,b) selectable in the custom color dialogue. You'll see the hardware replacing that color by the actual waveform display. That's probably why these scopes were so responsive, even back then
 

Offline HighVoltage

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Re: EEVblog #656 - Auction Score
« Reply #49 on: August 22, 2014, 08:51:09 pm »
At 20:05  Dave is showing the front cover and it says Infinium on it instead of Infiniium
Did the early HP versions got spelled with one  "i" instead of the double "ii"?
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