Tek CSA7404/TDS7000 repair project (Upgraded memory/CPU)

[colorburst]

I'm not familiar with the actual board or the trigger chips, so can't help you there unfortunately.

However, my opinion is that with the acquisition hardware from a TDS7254, your scope is effectively a mislabeled TDS7254. I'd see about fully converting it to a 7254 instead.

Lower BW models tend to have extraneous filters in the signal path and sometimes skip steps in the factory cal. ASIC grades might be different. It can be a very involved modification with many unknowns.

[calibrationfixture]

Hi,

Contrary to the TDS5000B and Non-B Series and the later DPO, DSA and MSO Series there is, as far as I know, no Memory Erasure and Nonvolatile Parts List for the CSA/TDS7000 Series. Later Documents are labeled Declassification and Security. There is a 077-0524-00 Declassification and Security Document which should list these Parts for the earlier TDS6000 and CSA/TDS7000 Series, but concentrates mainly on the TDS6154C.

Calibrationfixture

[charlyd]

for those who are struggling to get there ACQ in line with the unit model. Here is what to do.
in the corner is a bridge array where selection can be made.
This can be done  by planning a zero Ohm resistor over the right pads.  for selection TDS7404  only a R1069 is "0" ohm (bridged)

for tds7254  R1069 and R1062 need to be bridged. so in my case removing R1062  got my board shownieuws as a TDS7404.  and in that family the units 7104,7254,7404  have the same boards apart from the generation number.

[coromonadalix]

@charlyd

thats for the non B models  right ?

thats the question you asked earlier,  how did you find out 

[charlyd]

hi yes this is for the none B  version.
i found out by compare the board with two other 7404 boards i have laying arround.
and these sort of bridge rows are mostly meant for these adjustments.
After removing R1062  (0 ohm)  reinstalling the board and booting up, the board messaged like 7404 and the option key was pickup straight away.

[charlyd]

and for my trigger chips. they seems to be dead. dropping this message...
even thought all diagnostics test are pass

[coromonadalix]

sad for you  and getting these .....   

In the 7404 i restarted, theses chips dont have any hs on them,  and they seem good for now, no discoloration

all tests passed and all channels where fine with a 3.2Ghz  sig generator


i may re-play in it  ...  since we may buy an sds7000a scope soon, the 7404 was a plan B  loll

still had an crazy idea to put an intel 815 in it ... very very tight fit,  but seems to miss a voltage to start ??

[charlyd]

a Quick advise:  add heatsinks better yesterday,... then tomorrow, i did some measurement with the flir, chips temps are way too high, without heatsinks they will die eventually.
but i type this  message over and over here....

[Ghastly]

Hi I need some help. I own a TDS 7254. Everything was working on Windows 98. I upgraded to Windows 2000 and reinstalled TekScope with the program CSA7154-7404_TDS7154-7254-7404_2.5.3. It didn't work and none of the front panel was working and none of the relays were going off. I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 98 again and I'm getting the same issue with a pop-up "The following files did not self-register or unregister 1. C:\Program Files\Tektronix\TekScope\tekGPIB.ocx Class not registered." I really have no idea why none of this is working. Shutting down the machine and going back into 98, TekScope launches and gives me a very bad error, see photo for details.

[coromonadalix]

1st  did you had  dallas dead battery ?    you need to be sure  the vxwork  boot process is good and well configured,

if not  the scope part will not start,  you need to interface  the 10 pins header  onto a serial port and terminal software

this machine is a pc at first, you need to be sure you have all the drivers installed and no exclamation marks in windows device manager

is it a 7254   or 7254B ?      seems a 7254 non B  with the driver package  you wrote

you can even put Windows ME  or Windows 98 SE    better usb drivers ...

Windows 2k  can be tricky on certain motherboards,  you may get into a boot loop

What is the motherboard you have in it ?

i can post  the touch panel driver, power pc driver and other things,  but you need to do some checks first

you can register for free at xdev's   and get some missing drivers   they have a tds7000 and tds7000B  repo

[Ghastly]

Honestly, I just got this a week ago as an upgrade from the 1054z. By dallas dead battery do you mean the coin battery on the NLX board? I can check the vxwork boot process but it would seem weird to me for it not to work. It worked right until I switched and I have no errors when booting into Win98. The only drivers I know and install are the  CSA7154-7404_TDS7154-7254-7404_2.5.3, and yes it is a 7254 not a 7254B. Motherboard unsure, again haven't opened it since it's only been a week since I've had it but my configuration is a Celeron 566mhz with 256mb of ram installed. Am I missing a driver? I can give you the exact installation program I am using. Thanks for the reply though! This is some quite tricky stuff.

[Ghastly]

Side note: I remembered I did actually save some of the folders just in case prior to upgrading if that makes any difference. Details in pic.

[coromonadalix]

if you backed theses folder, you have the folders who contain the needed drivers

for the gpib interface you need the drivers setup

for the dallas battery  it is on the power pc board under the computer motherboard  dallas  ds xxxxx   


well since its a used scope you've bought,  do you have an idea of it's history / checkups / maintenance ??     dust cleaned ??  a checkup  has to be made

if windows boot fine minus some errors,  you have to check device manager

you can kill the scope software if  with a keyboard    crtl alt del  you invoke task manager and kill the tekscope running task


i have a 7404 non B,    who seemed fine  and the next day,  hell happened, took me 2 weeks to re-install everything  and find appropriate hardware to do re-installations, win2k was not working, endless loop,  ended up with Windows ME, with all the crap removed

motherboard (su 810) is hardware locked, you can not connect all you want, or all you need ...  hard drive size too   etc ... the cd-rom  would not read burned cd's,  finding originals was tough, changed to a 1ghz cpu, and doubled the ram with a mix of pc133 sync and pc100 sync (would not accept the same sizes and speed ?)

you have to read the tds7k thread,  its huge but the last pages have more recent informations ... 

the power pc dallas battery died, lost the vxwork configs ... tekscope was hanging up and crashed, spc errors due to eeprom corruption  ...

now fully working, spc fine etc ...

its a big beast you bought,  with some quirks     you should not have tampered with it,  unitil you had done an hdd cloning

[Ghastly]

Thank you. Ill check out the stuff you told me tomorrow not at the bench now. Last calibration date I think was 2015 that's traceable. And yes you are absolutely correct. Really should have cloned the drive.