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| The Rigol DS1052E |
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| Mark_O:
--- Quote from: JimBeam on March 16, 2010, 06:57:46 am ---You're absolutely right! :D --- End quote --- Ah, in that case, I have no quick answer ready for you. Sorry. If I come up with something, I'll let you know here. - Mark |
| Simon:
--- Quote from: Mark_O on March 16, 2010, 03:26:14 am --- --- Quote from: Simon on March 15, 2010, 05:21:35 pm ---well they are still making a profit, infact I can't really see why they bothered doing what they did, as usual economics has gotten in the way... --- End quote --- These comments, as well as the remainder of your ranting is complete rubbish. You have no clue what you're talking about. Sorry, Simon. Just because you "can't see why", doesn't mean that there isn't a very sound reason why. If it weren't for the ability to offer a range of products at differing price-points, many products wouldn't exist at all. Lots of manufacturers do it every day. And thank goodness for all of us. When Rigol had their previous C-series out, do you actually think they built 4-DIFFERENT models, with different logic circuits, PCBs, and layouts for the 25 MHz, 40, 60 and 100 MHz units? Nonsense. They designed and built a single unit, with some mechanism for setting its capabilities (internal jumpers, whatever). In this case, they're doing it with software, and left a rather large door open. Not the smartest thing in the world to do, considering who they're selling to (economy-minded EE's and hobbyists). Do you think that when Tek or Agilent or LeCroy or whoever make a _range_ of instruments available, they go through and put different quality components on each model, to justify the pricing differentials? If so, you are sadly mistaken. In this case, you're *itching about a $200 difference on 2 Rigol models. In those other cases, we're talking about $thousands. Of course, there they are a lot more clever about it. ;) - Mark --- End quote --- yea they develooped one product and made two out of it simple I said that at the end of my post. I just don't like waste thats all. for a little bit more but not quite as much as the 100 MHz version I would have bought it anyhow, the trick they pulled has only bought them a little time. now countless DS1052e users are going to covert their cheaply bought scopes to DS1102E scopes with very little effort, I'm not versed in the methods used to do this but it sounds like it is simple for many people and rigol have lost possibly money over it but then yea people would not have bought one at all were it not for the 1052 so I suppose it's 6 of one and a half dozen of the other. Oh and chances are they do already know it has been hacked, I'm sure they have been quivering since the notion was brought up that the 1052 and 1102 are so similar that they must be the same unit with something done to the 1052 to keep it under restraint. They will probably start working on new firmware that will anull the mod like changing the location of the information. |
| Mark_O:
--- Quote from: rf-loop on March 16, 2010, 06:01:27 am ---Here is picture about RigolDS1102E and DS1052Et. Sorry pictures quality is not good because fast snapshot... --- End quote --- Plenty good enough! These are an excellent confirmation. Thanks! The two units are now like 2 peas in a pod, as the saying goes. ;) --- Quote ---Both Rigol get same signal from HP8161A with double output. (outputs are not exactly same but well enough for this purpose) --- End quote --- You could have swapped the two output leads from the generator, to see if the deviation followed (i.e., signal induced), but I agree that the diff is so small, it's not very important. --- Quote ---Signal risetime is <1,3ns --- End quote --- I'm guessing quite a bit less. If the source signal were actually contributing that much to the total risetime readout, it would imply that the actual bandwidth of (both) the Rigol's was approaching 200 MHz (~1.8 nS risetimes). --- Quote ---As you can see in pictures, 1052 and 1102 have now same risetime (and simple it means also very much same BW). Later I will test with 70ps pulse and try look more deep. --- End quote --- You've done a great job here. I'm not going to comment on every point, but just say "thanks". I'll be interested in hearing your findings on triggering. --- Quote ---I personally hope that peoples do NOT make big noise about this... specially in many different internet stores "review" articles. Rigol is not stupid (world #2 in scopes)... and maybe they make some not so nice things... and it means money. --- End quote --- I agree completely. I can foresee a new firmware update shutting this capability down. :( - Mark |
| Mark_O:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 16, 2010, 07:37:38 am ---yea they develooped one product and made two out of it simple I said that at the end of my post. I just don't like waste thats all. --- End quote --- Well, I'll cut you some slack, but ask, "where's the waste?". By building a single product, and making it easily adaptable to multiple price points, and multiple customer-bases, that's the height of efficiency. They can then sell to a much wider range of consumers than would otherwise be possible... at any single fixed price-point. --- Quote ---the trick they pulled has only bought them a little time. --- End quote --- The "trick" is no different than any of their competitors. They just implemented it more clumsily. --- Quote ---now countless DS1052e users are going to covert their cheaply bought scopes to DS1102E scopes with very little effort --- End quote --- I won't argue with you there. --- Quote ---Oh and chances are they do already know it has been hacked, I'm sure they have been quivering since the notion was brought up that the 1052 and 1102 are so similar that they must be the same unit with something done to the 1052 to keep it under restraint. --- End quote --- You may be right. It does seem like an odd coincidence for the firmwares to be taken down from their website at just this point in time. --- Quote ---They will probably start working on new firmware that will anull the mod like changing the location of the information. --- End quote --- No doubt about that. Once they're aware of it, they WILL respond to lock it down. The only question is, how soon? - Mark |
| bushing:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 16, 2010, 07:37:38 am --- --- Quote from: Mark_O on March 16, 2010, 03:26:14 am ---Do you think that when Tek or Agilent or LeCroy or whoever make a _range_ of instruments available, they go through and put different quality components on each model, to justify the pricing differentials? If so, you are sadly mistaken. In this case, you're *itching about a $200 difference on 2 Rigol models. In those other cases, we're talking about $thousands. Of course, there they are a lot more clever about it. ;) --- End quote --- ... snip ... Oh and chances are they do already know it has been hacked, I'm sure they have been quivering since the notion was brought up that the 1052 and 1102 are so similar that they must be the same unit with something done to the 1052 to keep it under restraint. They will probably start working on new firmware that will anull the mod like changing the location of the information. --- End quote --- I look at it a little bit differently. As far as the economics -- this is a bit like like microprocessors, where (e.g.) Intel will make one batch of chips and sell them at three different speed grades, depending on how they test. This has a couple of benefits for Intel: * * Better yield -- by having a way to sell the flakier chips instead of throwing them away, their yield increases and they can get more profit from a wafer of chips than they would if they had to throw away 25% of them * * Larger market -- they can sell those flakey chips to people who are on a budget; they won't make quite the profit margin, but it's still a sale. There will always be people who will pay top dollar for the best goods (esp. businesses) -- so they will sell the chips that perform the best to the high end. They will mark the chips differently so that the people who buy the expensive ones at twice the price won't feel ripped off -- but Intel put the same amount of materials and labor into each chip. Now, of course, sometimes their product is better than average, but they need to keep their inventory of each chip constant -- so sometimes they will take mid-grade chips and sell them as low-grade. Some small percentage of the people who buy the low-end chips will overclock them and discover that they got better chips than what they paid for -- but as long as that doesn't really impact overall sales, Intel's not going to care too much (especially when a few of the overclockers will end up burning up their chips and have to buy new ones). The same thing is true for Rigol -- perhaps even more so, given that they're apparently overclocking a few different parts in these scopes. I would imagine that when they assemble the units, some of them perform better than others -- some probably get scrapped (or more likely, they put new chips on them), some get put in the 50MHz bin, some in the 100MHz bin. Maybe most of them work at 100MHz, but they have a way to sell the glitchier ones and still make a bit of money. If nothing else, you're paying extra for the guarantee that it will operate properly at 100MHz. So, you reprogram your scope, you take your chances. Unless Rigol sees their sales drop considerably, I doubt we'll see them do much -- they need to use the current interface for programming the scopes in the factory (or else it wouldn't be there). They could take the interface out somehow, but that's a fair bit of effort -- and the number of people who actually even try to do this is probably pretty small compared to the number of scopes they sell every day. (That, and their options are fairly limited. There's no downgrade protection and no code signing on the firmware... it'd take a lot of effort to lock it down at this point.) |
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