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

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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:

--- Quote from: Mrt12 on July 01, 2019, 05:55:13 pm ---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!
--- End quote ---
Great!
--- Quote from: Mrt12 on July 01, 2019, 05:55:13 pm ---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?

--- End quote ---
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: ---fixmbr
--- End code ---
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: ---fdisk /mbr
--- End code ---

You could also try
--- Code: ---fixboot
--- End code ---
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: ---bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force /mbr
--- End code ---
and for fixbot:
--- Code: ---bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootsect /nt60 ALL
--- End code ---
though 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  :palm: 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.

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