Rohde Schwarz ZVR VNA repair

[sixtimesseven]

this is FSEB30 image created by HDDRawCopy1.10

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j63qeolkqukwe7h/FSEB30.img?dl=0

I have cloned HDD on a transcend CF card with this couple of times for FSEA and FSEB myself

I formatted the CF disk and then wrote the image back to the CF card with the HDDRawCopy1.10.
Unfortunately I still get a no boot disk error

I will get a 100GB 2.5" HDD, maybe that one should work.

I had another look at the HDD copies and clones from the original HDD. There is def. only one partition. However, the hdd that was in the zvr was not the original one so maybe somone has done something already.

[analogRF]

mmm...that's strange, I was confident that the instrument should at least start booting... I would suggest you check all the connections, check the adapter and more importantly check connectivity between the adapter pins and the motherboard when it is attached. how about an SSD, do have an SSD on hand to try?

[sixtimesseven]

Well yes I do have an ssd und multiple hdd's here, unfortunately they are all SATA devices. I have some 3.5" 4-pin IDE's as well but not really a sensible way of attaching them to the 44pin connector of the ZVR.

Connections to the CF card should be good. Otherwise the CF card would most likely not report via the ideinfo tool.

I will get a suitable 44pin disk tomorrow evening and report back.

[sixtimesseven]

Interestingly I got into the BIOS with a combination ctrl+alt+esc at power up. So it has a BIOS and it is not really protected.

I might be wrong but I don't think the CF card is detected though.

This leaves the question why I do see it via the dos tools... Is it possible the bios does not support some features which the dos does out of the box? Or do I have to change some settings?

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

You write that the NT4 installer does not see a HD, but a CDROM. a CDROM is a "removable device", so this might be an indication that your CF card or the adaptor don't get recognized as fixed disk, but as removable - and the bios does not boot from these (except Floppys).

I don't know which brand / model of CF you are using (if I have just overlooked in one of your posts, I apologize), but I suggest you try to get exactly the same for which other people report success.

[sixtimesseven]

You write that the NT4 installer does not see a HD, but a CDROM. a CDROM is a "removable device", so this might be an indication that your CF card or the adaptor don't get recognized as fixed disk, but as removable - and the bios does not boot from these (except Floppys).

I don't know which brand / model of CF you are using (if I have just overlooked in one of your posts, I apologize), but I suggest you try to get exactly the same for which other people report success.

I first tried a SanDisk Extreme Pro 64GB CF card from a camera. Did not work, but I suspected it wouldn't.
Then I read on a different forum that apparently the Trancendent 133x series reports as fixed devices, so I ordered a 8GB card.

How would I check exactly? I did some googeling before but I have not found a way to reliably read the fixed/removable bit from the CF card. And on the PC the card in the adapter shows up like a fixed disk would in the partition manager for example. In ubuntu it reports as /dev/sdx and not hdx but apparently thats the way on new linux distributions now... So I really don't know how to check

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

The BIOS does not detect a HD, and apparently the BIOS does not support CDROMs. The NT4 setup, however, installs drivers for CDROM, and might see the CF as such. The same is probably true for the DOS 6.22

The CF behaving as a removable medium also explains why you don't see the 2 partitions. CD's don't have partitions.

Anyway, it is extremely important that you found out how to get into the BIOS. This helps a lot. If any Disk (CF or HD) is plugged into the instrument, it must be seen by the BIOS, otherwise it will never boot. And the BIOS does not care if the disk is partitioned or formatted, it detects a brand new, virgin disk on a hardware level.

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

I read somewhere that it also might be the adaptor. Some of them apparently report everything as removable.

Another idea: plug in the (failed) hard disk and start the BIOS again. Then we at least know how the BIOS screens look when it detects a HD For any future combinatoin of CF / Adaptor this gives a quick way to see if the disk is detected, without booting anything, and before writing anything onto the CF.. If the disk is still electrically alive and just has bad sectors, this should work.

"on the PC" - how is the CF connected to the PC? with the same adaptor, to a hardware IDE port on the mainboard? dto, but via a USB/IDE converter? or with a USB to CF / SD / other  adaptor? It depends on these devices' drivers how your OS reports the CF. I would only beleive the first variant, directly to hardware IDE on the mainboard of an old PC.

[sixtimesseven]

I tried the 64GB card just for fun and the "auto hdd disk" tool of the bios detects it   
It suggests "2" for the primary master. However, no luck. Not with my clone, not with the spectrum analyzer image, not with any of the numbers 1-3 (rest set to "N") ...

In another menu I noticed something else. There is a boot order option which is set to "C A SCSI"
Is it certain that the cloned partition gets the drive letter C? I know that this is the case for modern Win OS but on NT 4?

[sixtimesseven]

I read somewhere that it also might be the adaptor. Some of them apparently report everything as removable.

Another idea: plug in the (failed) hard disk and start the BIOS again. Then we at least know how the BIOS screens look when it detects a HD For any future combinatoin of CF / Adaptor this gives a quick way to see if the disk is detected, without booting anything, and before writing anything onto the CF.. If the disk is still electrically alive and just has bad sectors, this should work.

"on the PC" - how is the CF connected to the PC? with the same adaptor, to a hardware IDE port on the mainboard? dto, but via a USB/IDE converter? or with a USB to CF / SD / other  adaptor? It depends on these devices' drivers how your OS reports the CF. I would only beleive the first variant, directly to hardware IDE on the mainboard of an old PC.

The disk is connected via a IDE to usb adapter. You are right, with a CF to USB adapter the card reports always as removable.

Unfortunatly the disk is totaly dead. It spins but it won't show up anywhere.

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

And the IDE to USB adapter probably reports everything as HD.

But I think, you are an important step further: The 64 GB Cf is recognized by the BIOS as HD. But that only means, the BIOS communicates on a very low level with the CF's "controller". Nothing said about partitions, drives, etc.

Next step: boot DOS and look if FDISK also recognizes it. A DOS fdisk might report less than 64 GB, I think there was a 32 GB limit at the time, or even lower. Also, boot the NT4 install disks, see if the installer sees the disk and it's partitions.

If I remember correctly, these old OSses only recognized 4 primary partitions, no logical ones, and assigned drive letters to them in the order it found the partitions on the disk.

I still suppose that the CF has no master boot record, or no partition is marked as bootable. About what should happen in the NT boot process, see https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/nt-boot-process

[sixtimesseven]

I tried to insert a 100GB 2.5" HDD which I got today. Unfortunatly the bios won't even recognize it 
It works on my PC so it's probably just too big.

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

Today was my lucky day.

I started tinkering with old HD's, and wanted to find out in how far they behave different than my CF's, hoping to step onto something that might help sixtimesseven (and later myself, as I also have a ZVCE with rotten HD.)

Without much hope, I also connected the VNA's disk to the USB / ATA aqdapter.....
.... and instead of emitting click ... click ... click noises, like several times before, the damn thing spun up, got mounted and the two partitions popped up!

I could make a complete disk copy with dd, and file by file copies of the 2 partitions. Everything is packed in a zip archive, and can be downloaded here:

       https://www.dropbox.com/s/95ggozdptolvj13/zvce.zip?dl=0

Caution: Mine is an "old" instrument, with 486 CPU and DOS / RTOS as an operating system, not NT4

amendment: later I tried another full copy, this time without the "noerror" directive in dd, so that it would have stopped on a read error. The copy went through, so I have some hope that the ffile is without errors.

2nd amendment: I copied again with ddrescue. reported 0 errors. I am nearly convinced to have a good image.

[sixtimesseven]

Today was my lucky day.

I started tinkering with old HD's, and wanted to find out in how far they behave different than my CF's, hoping to step onto something that might help sixtimesseven (and later myself, as I also have a ZVCE with rotten HD.)

Without much hope, I also connected the VNA's disk to the USB / ATA aqdapter.....
.... and instead of emitting click ... click ... click noises, like several times before, the damn thing spun up, got mounted and the two partitions popped up!

I could make a complete disk copy with dd, and file by file copies of the 2 partitions. Everything is packed in a zip archive, and can be downloaded here:

       https://www.dropbox.com/s/95ggozdptolvj13/zvce.zip?dl=0

Caution: Mine is an "old" instrument, with 486 CPU and DOS / RTOS as an operating system, not NT4

amendment: later I tried another full copy, this time without the "noerror" directive in dd, so that it would have stopped on a read error. The copy went through, so I have some hope that the ffile is without errors.

2nd amendment: I copied again with ddrescue. reported 0 errors. I am nearly convinced to have a good image.

Hi Georg

Nice, thank you. Maybe it will work on the newer NT machine as well. I will try.
Unfortunatly I first have to get a <30GB drive which will be detected by the BIOS

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

2 more ideas::

ATA flash modules, DOM modules as describend here: http://www.bymm.de/documents/53/FSE_Harddisk_Replacement_V1.pdf. They are available from Reichelt.

an adaptor PATA to SD card like this: https://www.ebay.com/p/1670164290
As the ATA interface and that of an SD card are quite different, the adapters contain a microcontroller that implements the ATA protocoll. They are designed to replace the HD in old notebooks, so they always behave as a fxed disk, not a removable one. I did not try it, but I certainly will. they are cheap enough...

[analogRF]

I still believe the CF card should work, I have replaced HDD with CF on numerous old HP and R&S instruments with various old operating systems (from DOS to Win) and it has always worked. Maybe the size matters  I dont remember ever using any CF greater than 8GB and always used transcend, brand new "not formatted" blank card and wrote the HDD image to it by HDDRawCopy1.10 or SelfImage

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

@analogRF
I agree with you, it should work.

There have been several reports of people using them successfully, but there are others about serious difficulties, like presently those of sixtimesseven. Could you post, which models you exactly used, and which adapter? While most adapters are passive, just wiring the 2 different connectors together there seem to be ones that "do something" and always present a fixed disk to the ATA port. The SYBA adapter might be such a beast.

[analogRF]

for adapter I used something identical to this
https://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-44-Pin-Male-to-CF-Compact-Flash-Male-Adapter-Connector-Z9N3-9C-K8S5/123755432456?epid=725184263&hash=item1cd0660a08:g:8PgAAOSwYMldXRiX

for 2.5" HDD replacement (44 pin) and whenever I needed 40 pin IDE for 3.5" HDD, I used this
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Compact-Flash-CF-to-3-5-Female-40-Pin-IDE-Bootable-Adapter-Converter-SD-TEUS/123416007408?hash=item1cbc2ad2f0:g:eL8AAOSwK6RZEiBt

for CF card I always used 133X Transcend 4GB or 8GB from China. When I burn image for cloning, I never format the disk first. Actually, come to think of it, I don't know if they come formatted out of the box or not but I dont format before burning the image to it. Not sure if that makes any difference though
 

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

Thanks.

These adapters are obviously passive, there is nothing on the board except the connectors, a master/slave jumper, a few decoupling caps and on the second one a power connector as that's not available in the 40 pin ATA.

I will check the "preformated" issue, I have 3 different brand newTranscend 8 GB CF's here,  bought from different sources. Anyway, it should not matter, formatting is nothing more than writing the basic structure of a file system onto the disk, and that all get's overwritten if you bytewise write an image to the disk.

I am preparing a writeup that collects the information scattered around on the net, and that will contain a table of "known good" CF / adapter combinations. I'll publish that in a while, most likely on a new thread here on EEVblog.

[sixtimesseven]

Ok, I'll be dammed

It seems like it was the cf ADAPTER 

I ordered a 44pin extension cable (because I got tiered of pulling the cpu board out) and added another CF card reader just because - new adapter crappier build quality and less components. And it works!!!
It was really surprising since the first adaper worked and I could write and read to the CF card via the USB to IDE adapter 

Anyway, first I had the old ZVR firmware on there which Ghieber shared from his ZVR ... It started booting but failed eventually. Then I formated the 8GB card and restored with EaseUs and it works just fine
I also tried the other 64GB SanDisk card. Works as well...

Thank you all for your help!  Please find the pictures of the cards and adapters below. I also updated the Dropbox folder https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gfgs2enykqh2scc/AACPaUPcZGZYzxkGzZBC2EwUa?dl=0 and added a image made with the "HDD Raw Copy Tool v1.10" from the 8GB Trancend Card in addition to the others. It should stay up for a long time but if you have another idea where to place it feel free to downoad and host it somwhere else

Please find pictures of the cards and adapters below.


THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP!

[sixtimesseven]

I am preparing a writeup that collects the information scattered around on the net, and that will contain a table of "known good" CF / adapter combinations. I'll publish that in a while, most likely on a new thread here on EEVblog.

Please do that!
I read somwhere that the limiting factor for CF cards on IDE is the IDE interface and not the cards. But I cannot find that reference at the moment.
It would be interesting to test if it increases boot speed, how much and if there are improvements apart from the boot speed in terms of usability (zvr seems already pretty quick to me).

[analogRF]

happy to hear that you got it working 
that crappy adapter is exactly what I have been using on numerous occasions like this on HP and R&S gear... by default they are set on being master and it should stay that way. Maybe your original one was set on slave? just a thought...

[analogRF]

I am preparing a writeup that collects the information scattered around on the net, and that will contain a table of "known good" CF / adapter combinations. I'll publish that in a while, most likely on a new thread here on EEVblog.

Please do that!
I read somwhere that the limiting factor for CF cards on IDE is the IDE interface and not the cards. But I cannot find that reference at the moment.
It would be interesting to test if it increases boot speed, how much and if there are improvements apart from the boot speed in terms of usability (zvr seems already pretty quick to me).

dont get your hopes up on boot speed. The boot time does not change noticeably because (1) these R&S instruments must upload a lot of crap into different boards (transputers) and that is the main bottleneck for boot time (2) for read/write from/to the drive you are very limited by the motherboard interface (IDE or whatever it is) so the speed increase is very small. Its not like when you replace an IDE HDD with a SATA SSD
For example when I replaced the HDD with CF on Agilent 54845A scope (Win98 and an old AMD K6 standard PC motherboard) the boot time decreased hardly by 10% or less I would say...

 

[sixtimesseven]

happy to hear that you got it working 
that crappy adapter is exactly what I have been using on numerous occasions like this on HP and R&S gear... by default they are set on being master and it should stay that way. Maybe your original one was set on slave? just a thought...

Hmm I don't think so. I did not change anything. But I did try the other jumper position and it would not work either.

[Georg - PY5ZSE]

I don't care much about boot time. If that goes down, it's the icing on the cake, not more. The reason to throw out the HD's in these instruments and replace them with something else is to get rid of them before they fail, which sure as hell they will do some day, taking the OS, software, and, most important, factory calibration data of your individual instrument with them into digital nirvana.

Anyway, sixtimesseven, congratulations! I really felt sorry seeing you get more desperate from post to post, and am happy that it finally was a piece of shitty hardware and not something fundamental.

If anybody has more information, what works and what not, let me know. I will be travelling the next 2+ weeks, but thereafter I want to finish and publish what I collected.