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Agilent 54835A scope (4 channel 1GHz / 4Gs/s) repair & uphack
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charlyd:
Here are the screenshot where analogRF askes for in post #363, sorry just came across this post.  Like NCTnico said don t forget to first default the bios settings.

screenshots are from a repaired 54845A (FIC VA-503A)
JDubU:
I think that "error writing device PRN, abort , retry, fail" is a Windows boot problem, probably associated with the motherboard BIOS settings and not with the scope electronics.
It can occur when a DOS program is trying to print to the default printer and there is no device to print to.  In DOS days, printing was done to a parallel port so make sure that the parallel port is enabled in the BIOS.
alpher:
I've ordered a used acquisition board on eBay, we'll see when it comes.
alpher:
Now I've had time to sober up, I've finally managed to put my 54845A project back together. Replacing the acquisition board fixed the logic trigger issues that i had.
The board I bought on ebay came with a full set of A/D converters(FISOs) but no attenuators. No problems for me as attenuator assemblies on my original A13 board were fine, passing all the selftests. Luck had it that 3 out of 4 FISOs calibrated without an issue, only channel 3 wouldn't. It will pass all the self tests but would fail the self calibration routine. As I couldn't find a way to try to calibrate only one channel and the whole calibration routine is quite long, I'm not sure if this was a defective A/D converter or the socket. I did try to clean the contacts on the chip and the socket it didn't help, so I just replaced chip and socket from my original board.
After that it all went smoothly, scope passed all the selftests and calibrated just fine.
Upgraded the OS first to windows98SE then windows ME, mostly to get a decent USB support as I also installed a supermicro slimline USB panel instead floppy drive.
A ha, forgot to mention that the scope runs now of 8GB CF card mounted on the rear bracket  and the mobo is an intel ZX chipset with P3 933MHz, and 512MB ram, quite a decent machine for win ME.
I'm running the scope application with /noram /internal parameters as it seems to be booting much faster this way, gone is also config.sys with the ramdrive.
All in all doing away with ramdrive cuts the boottime by~30%, switching to windows ME cuts that still in half. 
Anyway now that its all done I'm left with quite a bit of extra parts, if any one is interested I have :

one A13 acqusition board  with 3 good FISO's and one most likely bad (there is a slim chance it could be a socket), no attenuators. (it has that logic trigger issue)

2 x A5 boards that I burned during testing and consequently repaired once I got my hand on a supply CT t65550 chips. both running fine .

2 x A6 interface boards also running fine, got them together with the A5 boards, on one of them I had to replace 60 pin connector , couldn't find the original so I installed just the .05" 60 pin header and it works fine.

Plus misc other small items here and there, some MECL chips and couple of CT vga chips as well.

 
alpher:
Couple more pics:



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