Agilent 54835A scope (4 channel 1GHz / 4Gs/s) repair & uphack

[nctnico]

I don't think that you grasp the problem at hand here, there is not a driver or software package available for these scopes.

Oh yes I certainly do.
It's a PC first running scope SW. Any scope running Windows should be though of like this.

Get the PC bit right and the rest will fall into line.

Yes and no. Getting the PC part up and running to the point where it boots Windows properly is step one. Step two is to get the equipment specific drivers installed. If you have an original disk then it should be possible to get the right inf file and .sys files from it. If you are lucky these are in a seperate directory together with the software. If you are unlucky you have to take these from the inf and system32 directories under the WIndows installation directory. Not undoable but it takes some skills on dealing with how Windows is structured.

And even then there may be less obvious parts of the software. The route I have taken with my 54835A is to make a backup of the original disk and use the official software updates to get to the latest software version. I didn't re-install Windows 98.

[alpher]

I've noticed that if you just keep cancelling all the "found Hardware " wizards you can sail almost to the end of install, unfortunately at the ens the same BSOD awaits, so who knows you may have to install one of the drivers along the way, will keep playing.

[alpher]

I don't think that you grasp the problem at hand here, there is not a driver or software package available for these scopes.

Oh yes I certainly do.
It's a PC first running scope SW. Any scope running Windows should be though of like this.

Get the PC bit right and the rest will fall into line.

Yes and no. Getting the PC part up and running to the point where it boots Windows properly is step one. Step two is to get the equipment specific drivers installed. If you have an original disk then it should be possible to get the right inf file and .sys files from it. If you are lucky these are in a seperate directory together with the software. If you are unlucky you have to take these from the inf and system32 directories under the WIndows installation directory. Not undoable but it takes some skills on dealing with how Windows is structured.

And even then there may be less obvious parts of the software. The route I have taken with my 54835A is to make a backup of the original disk and use the official software updates to get to the latest software version. I didn't re-install Windows 98.

Actually, no and no may be closer to the truth.
The way I see it HP/Agilent runs the scope application from a ramdisk, that  is being setup at bottime. They even mention something about it in the instruction manual, to the occasion that you can just turn the power off to the scope without worrying about a normal windows shutdown procedure. Plus that  the windows itself doesn't require normal serial number input , indicates that the windows install was rather highly customized on these scopes, hence no application install files, no drivers, etc.

[Converter]

The thing is that I'm using the original HP/Agilent recovery images that have to have the proper drivers etc.

Yes, there are drivers, but you do not know where they are and how they are called. The system does not know this either and installs standard non-proprietary drivers with a newer date.
You were correctly told - you should not allow Windows to choose drivers.
Windows prefers drivers that are often incompatible with special hardware. The drivers you need, often do not have compatibility data. You must manually point to them. During the installation process, you should not have chosen "automatic installation", but rather specify the location of the necessary ".inf".
Sometimes it is useful to even completely remove the driver from the system, which Windows tries to install automatically so that it does not interfere with the installation of your driver.

I extracted all the drivers from the running 54845B system. Download them from the link and update each of them by force:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17D6171w5FhPHHetg21qx1XyKgS37PN_P/view?usp=sharing

In addition, you will most likely have to independently find on the Internet and install the drivers necessary for your new set of i810 motherboard chipsets (which are not in my set).


Try this:
Choose the PCI video adapter as the first one in the BIOS and it is advisable to disable the video processor integrated on the motherboard.
After installing the disk image do not agree to auto-install drivers.
First, download and install the drivers for your motherboard manufacturer for y set i810 chipsets.
Then manually install the "Chips & Technologies 65550 PCI" video adapter driver by specifying the path to the .inf in the appropriate folder in my set.
After that, manually install the latest driver from my folder for the "548XX Scope Interface".
Reboot after each step.

[charlyd]

why not install Windows XP (32) on that scope... and then copy over all software needed and if i am right there is a Windows xp version of this scope so drivers and scope software should run...
or is this cutting the edges too much?  i don t know what motherboard you have exactly. or did i miss that way back ;-)

keep on following you...

[Krzys]

why not install Windows XP (32) on that scope... and then crry over all software needed and if i am right there is a Windows xp version of this scope so drivers and scope software should run...

No version of 54845 came with factory pre-installed XP from Agilent, as far as I know.

I guess that alpher struggles to get working scope with his new mobo first - just like he had it working with factory mobo - then maybe he would do some more experiments with XP, which might prove unsuccessful (based on my attempts). If I were him, I would do the same.

Drivers from Windows 98 based Infiniiums won't work in XP as these were old style .vxd drivers (not WDM). Scope software that was in factory configuration in this scope won't work too (it messes around with I/O ports of C&T 65550 graphics card, something palette-related I think).

While there are drivers for acq board in 54845 for XP and there are newer versions of scope software that do run in XP (codebase carried over from Win 9x scopes), both were meant for 54831/54832 scopes (or possibly some others that I've missed), which were newer than 54845.

For more details on trying to run XP on first infiniium (lowly 54810), see my post here.
Update: And for explanation, why it failed, see my latest post here.

[Converter]

I did everything that you wrote over a year ago. I even at some point achieved that the Agilent oscilloscope application in Windows XP 54845 starts up successfully (it incorrectly identifies the device model), and there are no visible errors in the device manager. But the original drivers do not work in Win XP, and the drivers from 54830/54831 do not support this ACQ board. If someone does not make a modification of the original drivers 54845 (15, 25,35) to support Win XP, the success did not reach, IMHO.

[Tony_G]

Drivers from Windows 98 won't work in XP as these were old style .vxd drivers (not WDM).

This is correct but I should point out that WDM was introduced in Win98 so if HPAK wrote WDM drivers for Win98 there is a chance that they might work. VxD certainly not though as Krzys pointed out.

TonyG

[Krzys]

Drivers from Windows 98 won't work in XP as these were old style .vxd drivers (not WDM).

This is correct but I should point out that WDM was introduced in Win98 so if HPAK wrote WDM drivers for Win98 there is a chance that they might work. VxD certainly not though as Krzys pointed out.

TonyG

In all Win 9x-based scopes I've seen VxD drivers, .sys driver files only on XP-based scopes. I think that I looked into all versions available in usual places, before I discovered set of XP recovery ISOs.

But well, that gives me another idea to try - taking let's say tstone.sys from XP based scope and trying to run it in Windows 98, with correct 54810/15/25/35/45/46 win 9x app - to see, if the driver itself works with old (codename "Tombstone") board. Of course all that provided the XP-sourced driver would work in Windows 98 (and it is real WDM driver, not the old-style kernel-mode NT .sys). This could be both tricky (as alpher's case demonstrated, where he is trying to make it just working, such extravagant experiments for now) and unconclusive (if it wouldn't work).

[Krzys]

I've found, why my efforts on getting Windows XP on 54810 were doomed to failure... 

... in this very thread ... 

Before anyone starts talking WinXP on the 54810A series. 
The 54830/31/32A/D used 1GHz or 1.2 GHZ Pentium III processors on a newer platform without ISA slots. They did use the same C&T graphics driver chip, though. However, the ACQ controller is newer (In fact the older ACQ controller from the 54810A series is present but only used for power on functions, front panel control, and the scope's video frame buffer) I think upgrading to XP would be a problem as the driver for the ACQ controller would not want to talk to the old ACQ board.

EDIT: And I don't think the pin-out for the ribbon cable is the same anyway...

EDIT2: which wouldn't matter anyway. Duh. You'd have to find an XP driver for the OLD controller.

The picture shows the newer ACQ controller in red, the old one in blue

If one could find a newer motherboard (just to upgrade the hardware for performance) with an ISA slot (For GPIB functionality) it just might work.

According to the post cited above, Tombstone board (old acq board interface card that is in 54810) was delegated to handling I/O and C&T graphics in XP based scopes (5483x) (edit: according to service manual, I/O was connected to new board, old board was connected to display only - and nothing else - which makes no sense to me whatsoever, from what it got data to display? from Windows scope app!?). Scope was connected to another board.

So its no surprise that Windows XP tstone.sys is not enough for running XP on 5481x/2x/35/4x...

No surprise that opening \\.\Scope0 failed... On the other hand opening \\.\Tombstone0 failed as well... (I think that I've tried it at least once, but now I'm not sure).

I don't know how could I've missed that post on the first page. I guess I never enlarged that thumbnail, as I don't remember this image.

Prior to this latest ehm... discovery, I've got an impression, that there were two distinct ACQ boards interface cards used in 54830/1/2/3 scopes - the original one that was carried over from 5481x/2x/35/4x, present in Win'98 based 54830/1/2/3 and newer one present in XP-based 54830/1/2/3. According to my impression, factory XP image in 54830/1/2/3 had only drivers for newer acq board interface card, while mythical XP upgrade kit that fetches insane amounts of money on ebay® (N5383A Infiniium Performance Upgrade kit) provides drivers for older acq board interface card as well.

My impression formed while reading the other thread and other posts on the topic. I cannot find it right now, but somebody tried to force drivers for newer acq board interface card (VEN_15BC&DEV_050X) to the old one (VEN_103C&DEV_1020 - he had big question mark in Device Manager for that card) and had some error message from the scope software (wrong address? invalid address? don't remember).

Maybe my impressions were all wrong and all 54830/1/2/3 Infiniiums in fact have two cards, as quoted post says - old tombstone board carried over from first generation of Infiniiums, now delegated to handle I/O and display (edit: according to service manual, I/O was connected to new board, old board was connected to display only - and nothing else - which makes no sense to me whatsoever, from what it got data to display? from Windows scope app!?), and new ACQ board interface card that interfaces mobo with the scope. This makes perfect sense for me.

Or maybe I mistook ACQ board (that big thing underneath) for interface card - and there were indeed two revisions of ACQ board installed in different revisions of the scope.

Somewhat supporting the hypothesis about two ACQ boards interface cards in 54830/1/2/3 is the fact, that XP-based 54831D had tstone.sys/tstone.inf as well, as evidenced by this post. I think that mythical XP upgrade kit that fetches insane amounts of money on ebay® (N5383A Infiniium Performance Upgrade kit) is the same as recovery media for all 54830/1/2/3 scopes, used internally by HPAK. The ISO's that once were hosted on Keysight's ftp, are possibly the exact same thing (except for the fact, that XP was upgraded to SP2 here).

[Tony_G]

But well, that gives me another idea to try - taking let's say tstone.sys from XP based scope and trying to run it in Windows 98, with correct 54810/15/25/35/45/46 win 9x app - to see, if the driver itself works with old (codename "Tombstone") board. Of course all that provided the XP-sourced driver would work in Windows 98 (and it is real WDM driver, not the old-style kernel-mode NT .sys).

Unfortunately WDM was designed to be forwards compatible and not backwards compatible. It is possible for a Win98 WDM driver to work on WinXP but not necessarily the other way around. In fact I'd expect most, if not all WinXP WDM drivers to fail on Win98.

TonyG

[Mrt12]

Hi,
My scope uses the VP22 mainboard and runs Win98.
Is it possible to upgrade my hardware to XP, or do I need a new board?
Do the previously mentioned M815TG ISO files work for XP?

Thanks,
Tobias
HB9FSX

[Krzys]

Hi,
My scope uses the VP22 mainboard and runs Win98.
Is it possible to upgrade my hardware to XP, or do I need a new board?
Do the previously mentioned M815TG ISO files work for XP?

If it is 54830/1/2/3 (with two interface cards - old one for I/O and new one for scope interfacing - just like on following picture), then these ISO's should be fine. It should work out-of-the-box (remember to install scope app downloaded from Keysight website after restoring ghost image from the CDs).

Just remember to make a backup of current HDD with Win'98 - prefferably full sector-by-sector image (or use another HDD for Windows XP).

Scope updated to Windows XP will need some 256 MB of RAM - or more. With 96 MB HP/Agilent/Keysight XP install is unusable, even without scope app.

On the other hand I think that previous-generation Infiniiums (54810/15/20/35/45/55) never used VP22 motherboard.

Here are two interface cards as in XP-based 54830/1/2/3 Infiniiums:

[Mrt12]

Well, very interesting stuff, could you send us the link to these images ?

Here's the link to said ftp dump:

https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/

recovery .GHO is divided into 4 CDs, so we need the following 4 ISO files: M815G-T3A-Disk1.iso, M815G-T3A-Disk2.iso, M815G-T3A-Disk3.iso and M815G-T3A-Disk4.iso.

Some files from the same directory: 54830-97013.pdf, Mesa-BIOS-HowTO.DOC, VP22.pdf, VP22AG09.zip.

ISO of CD that makes recovery HDD image from fully installed scope: makeimage11.iso

Here's main archive.org page for that download: https://archive.org/details/ftp.keysight.com (in case somebody wanted to download the whole 183 GiB tar file).

If booting recovery CD wouldn't let you install it, you could just use ghost to restore these .gho files. In my case I've used ghost32.exe (Norton Ghost 8.0.0.984 from 2003) under WinPE, after collecting all .gho files in one directory.

I'll be willing to try them on a i810 board with  P3 cpu that most certainly has the required sse and I have more than enough of sdram sticks for xp to run comfortably.

Sure it has SSE, but I guess that the issue lies elsewhere anyway. Though I wish you luck with it :)

If only the damn board ever decides to show up.


p.s. Dobra robota panie Krzysztofie.

Well, thanks, though I don't think I achieved anything - quite the contrary. But maybe someone else will eventually do it.

Hi,
I downloaded the 4 ISO images and burnt them on CDs. Botting from Disk 1 works fine and the recovery starts, but it cannot read CD 2. Did you have the same problem? how did you merge the Ghost image files?

My board has 256 MB RAM installed. There are two additional spare sockets for more RAM, but I think it will be difficult to obtain SDRAM these days :-(

attached is a picture of my scope.

[gslick]

My board has 256 MB RAM installed. There are two additional spare sockets for more RAM, but I think it will be difficult to obtain SDRAM these days :-(

The memory is 168-pin DIMM PC133 SDRAM. While you might not be able to buy that new current production, you should be able to find another 256MB DIMM used for less than $10.

I don't have a VP22 motherboard. I have a similar M815-G motherboard from a 16900A which came with two MT8LSDT3264AG-133 256MB Sync 133MHz CL3 DIMMs. I currently see several of those on eBay in the US for less than $10, including shipping.

[Krzys]

Hi,
I downloaded the 4 ISO images and burnt them on CDs. Botting from Disk 1 works fine and the recovery starts, but it cannot read CD 2. Did you have the same problem? how did you merge the Ghost image files?

No, since I used no CDs to do the restore.

AFAIR I moved the HDD to some laptop, then netbooted it via PXE to WinPE, mounted shared folder with extracted content of every ISO (all *.gho files in the same directory - I didn't merged them, just placed each file in the same directory), then I've used Ghost 8.0 for Windows to restore the image to HDD.

I couldn't have used my scope to do this, since (1) it got no CD drive and I didn't wanted to needlessly burn CD or DVD, and even if I wanted to burn a CD, there was no guarantee, that HP/Agilent/Keysight blessed restore CD set would restore anything on my - totally unsupported - scope (without proper interface boards, as it turned out); (2) my scope didn't wanted to boot from network, Intel Pro 100 with (otherwise) working bootrom flashed just hung the system and realtek 8139-based card with etherboot loaded from the diskette didn't wanted to talk with my network, (3) even if I succeed in PXE booting the scope, I would have somewhat limited possibilities (I have two WinPE's in my network, one XP-based that runs off the network and got somewhat broken TCP/IP stack - it would work, but I wouldn't be able to mount network share with *.gho files from another PC with it; the other is Windows 7-based and in form of sdi image loadable to RAM, which takes 90 MB for ramdisk alone - this wouldn't work on a scope with 96 megabytes of RAM).

If there is some read error, then I see the following possibilities:

• corrupted ISO file - see md5sums of mine, at the end of this post, to make sure it is not the case
• improperly burned (failing CD recorder?)/marginal/faulty/dusty CD blank
• aging CD drive in the scope (failing laser?)
• issues with IDE cable
• issues with configuration (I remember for example that when I had only one CD-ROM on an IDE channel, configured as slave, it used to silently corrupt data read from CDs - rather small extent, but there was corruption)
• some bugs/quirks in chipset
• bad RAM/motherboard/PSU

You could kill two bird...eee points from the list above with one ston...ee with replacing CD drive with DVD one (I guess there's a plenty pata laptop drives on eBay, since this was the most popular kind until some 2009-2010 - of course provided that the scope has CD and not DVD drive by default) and preparing (and then burning) ISO containing all *.gho files (you need some software that could edit ISO files, then you need to open the first one and add all *.gho files extracted from subsequent images - you need to proceed in this way so the resultant ISO would still be bootable).

Or, alternatively, connect the HDD to another PC and use ghost for Windows.

MD5SUMs of my images:

Code: [Select]

a2285f8acc7ab82dfca1181c416855f0 *M815G-T3A-Disk1.iso
365bc80cddbaff870f0b8b7f3cc67879 *M815G-T3A-Disk2.iso
92fae25cec4fd22f60219d729a05f182 *M815G-T3A-Disk3.iso
57b2fb33104fee5925853949b611bfd5 *M815G-T3A-Disk4.iso

attached is a picture of my scope.

I see two interface cards in there, I think it should be OK.

[Mrt12]

I verified the MD5 sums. They are OK. I also tried to install Ghost in a Virtual Box, which worked fine, but is unable to restore the image because it misses some drivers, i.e. Ghost wants to reboot the PC and then misses some IDE or whatever drivers. I assume my PC hardware is too new for this old stuff to work reliably.... :-/

[Mrt12]

OK I just tried it again, I burnt CD2 again on a different PC with a different drive. No success so far, the Ghost recovery still fails when it comes to part 2, claiming that there is "corruption in the image". If I hat Ghost32.exe I could recover the Image in a VirtualBox and then copy it to the scope, but I have no idea where to get that software.

[nctnico]

Try to set the write speed to the slowest setting. CDRs written at high speed never worked for me especially when using in a different CDROM drive.

[Mrt12]

I managed to get a copy of Ghost32.exe and used that in a VirtualBox to restore the images to  a virtual disk. My next step will then be to copy the virtual disk to the scope using CloneZilla, which I know works fine because I have already used CloneZilla to make an image of the installed hard disk.

[Mrt12]

I made some small progress. Using "Hirens Boot CD" which contains some basic Windows XP PE environment and Ghost32, I was able to boot my scope. I copied all Ghost files to my NAS and was able to restore them on the scope via network, it worked almost out of the box and the speed is way faster than the recovery via CD!
The restore was successful, but it appears that there is something "Bad" which I am not sure yet. Perhaps it has to do with the partition table or so because my IDE disk is smaller than the standard disk used by agilent?

[Krzys]

I made some small progress. Using "Hirens Boot CD" which contains some basic Windows XP PE environment and Ghost32, I was able to boot my scope. I copied all Ghost files to my NAS and was able to restore them on the scope via network, it worked almost out of the box and the speed is way faster than the recovery via CD!

Great!

The restore was successful, but it appears that there is something "Bad" which I am not sure yet. Perhaps it has to do with the partition table or so because my IDE disk is smaller than the standard disk used by agilent?

Just restore standard Windows XP MBR (Master Boot Record). You could do this by booting into Windows XP recovery console and then using the command

Code: [Select]

fixmbr Any Win2k/XP/Win2k3 installation media should do, you just need to pres "R" on this screen:

Alternatively, you could boot the scope with MS-DOS floppy/CD and use the command:

Code: [Select]

fdisk /mbr
You could also try

Code: [Select]

fixboot from Windows XP Recovery Console, but I think it shouldn't matter/wouldn't help.

Windows 7 & Windows 7-based WinPE equivalent for fixmbr is said to be

Code: [Select]

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force /mbrand for fixbot:

Code: [Select]

bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootsect /nt60 ALLthough I think I have never used these (I hardly remeber using fixmbr/fixboot in XP recovery console either)

Both methods should work and result in the same - restoring standard boot loader code to MBR.

If it still doesn't boot (or boots to small WinPE image on second partition), then please make sure that first partition is marked as active.
You could also install Smart Boot Manager (smbr) - ancient boot manager with menu, which will allow you to boot either XP installation or recovery image on second partition in case of some screwup (but please bear in mind that in fresh installation there is no *.gho file on the recovery partition, you need to create it as per HP/Keysight/Agilent guide - or substitute the wrapper or recovery wizard for something like Total Commander or cmd.exe).

As far as SmartBootManager is concerned, the easiest way of installing smbr for me is to write it to a floppy, boot it, select HDD (Harddisk it is called, not one of the partitions), then open menu (by pressing Tab) and use command System Settings -> Install SmartBootManager.

Stock Agilent/Keysight/HP image uses recovery partition (XP-based Infiniiums come with no installation media) which could be booted instead of the normal one by pressing some key on startup. Recovery partition contains a WinPE with a wizard that just runs ghost32.exe (via some wrappers AFAIR) that restores *.gho image made in the factory after calibration. It was claimed somewhere (AFAIR on these forums) that it uses smbr to select partition to boot, but it doesn't look like it at all for me. Anyway I guess that Agilent's MBR stores some hardcoded offset somewhere and that's why it doesn't work. It didn't worked for me either, but somehow I forgot to add such details in my previous posts.

btw. thanks for the screenshot, I think I never saw that listing from 54830/1/2/3 with the cards and PCI bridges listed in all their glory.

[charlyd]

What about installing windows xp normally on the scope and then standalone convert it to a virtual machine and from there on build a working scope enviroment which you create a acronis image from.

are all hardware drivers available or usable from xp ready machines    or is that the problem??

i keep following you guys curious about the finish...

[charlyd]

any update on this project?   is windows XP now working in the 54835A/54845A  models? with the M815-G mobo?

[analogRF]

Today I took out my HP 54845A after 2 or 3 month sitting in the corner to do some measurements and comparison with my LC584. But the scope
keeps randomly rebooting itself  Sometimes right after I turn it on before windows 98 starts and sometimes it work for 10-15 minutes doing all sorts of stuff but it just shuts down and restarts. It was working fine the last time I used it.

It's an old HP brand with AMI motherboard 757 rev C and its original AMD CPU. I had replaced the HDD with Compact flash card sitting right on top of the IDE connector on the board (with adapter of course) and it has 4x64MB RAM which I know its way overkill. No other upgrades. but it was fine before I put it away.

what do you think could be wrong? I have been dicking around with reseating PCI and ISA cards and RAM sticks but it keeps rebooting randomly. I don't think it is heat related because sometimes it happens right after cold boot before even win98 starts.