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Agilent LA 16803a - how to best configure (upgrades etc) ?

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Pilatus:
I recently acquired a nice 16803a logic analyzer that came with a clean install of win xp with sp2. I have read the archives, however I am left with questions as to what my next steps should be. Let me ask this as a multi part question. (I summerized my findings in red below.)

1. Should I update to sp 3? If so, can I update using sp 3 in the "wild" or must it come from Agilent?
YES. I used the sp3 in the wild and all went just fine.

2. Presently a full cold power up boot to the LA software takes 1 min 40 sec. I read in the archives that sp 3 will increase boot time to over 4 minutes? Is this verified?
After installing sp3 and all the add-ons including upgrading the LA 5.9.xxx software, it boots in about 1 min 20s into the logic analyzer application.

3. Motherboard ADLINK M-880 is equipped with 1GB of ram. Is it worth upgrading to more memory, say 4GB (looks like only 3GB might be supported); what performance improvement will this provide?Will it help speed up the boot time?
I installed 4 sticks of 1GB PC2 5300U RAM that I happened to have around. Don't know if it sped up boot time since I made several changes at once, but final boot time did improve as noted above.

4. If upgrading motherboard RAM, what part number to install?
I installed 4 sticks of 1GB PC2 5300U RAM. See the ADLINK manual in Reply #3 below.

5. Presently has Agilent LA software 3.70.0003 installed. What feature improvements will I see going to ver 5.9xxx?
Can operate the LA remotely over the network via the app, in addition to using remote desktop if you still want to. Did not explore other features yet.

6. Worth installing an SSD? (My understanding is that the SSD should be limited to 120GB partition).
YES, if only for the noise! It is likely one of the reasons of the boot speedup, but gone is the grating high frequency pitch noise I was originally attributing to the fans.

7. Anyone have a copy of the ADLINK M-880 motherboard manual?
I contacted ADLINK and they provided me with the M-945 manual. See the ADLINK manual in Reply #3 below. It seems that Agilent commissioned a version of this board (with likely a custom BIOS).

8. Can the .ala file be opened by a 3rd party software for post analysis?[/li][/list]
You can save (File/Save As) as an Excel file for the time portion of interest if you need to. You can also operate the LA analysis remotely using 5.9.xxx on a faster computer.

Thanks in advance.







gslick:
If you do a clean install from the 16803A system software recovery DVD, it will install an already activated installation of Windows XP SP2.  If you do that, then you can install version 03.67.1008 of the logic analyzer software from CD.

Unless you happened to receive an installation CD with version 3.70.0003 of the logic analyzer software, or if the full set of the installation files are present on your hard drive which you can save to run the installation again later, you can't get back to version 3.70.0003 as that is not available to download from Keysight.

If you are going to stick with a version 3.x of the logic analyzer software, you will probably have slightly quicker boot times sticking with XP SP2 than if you upgrade to XP SP3. If you want to upgrade to version 05.90.1110 of the logic analyzer software, then you need to upgrade to XP SP3. To do that, you can just run the standard XP SP3 upgrade that was available from Microsoft.

You can upgrade the ADLINK M-880 with either (4x) 1GB DIMMs, or (2x) 2GB DIMMs. The resulting usable memory will be somewhere around 3.2GB, if I remember correctly. I'd have to boot one up to check. The last set of DIMMs I bought a while ago were Samsung M378T5663QZ3-CF7 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800, for example like this pair: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155513343077  I haven't actually installed those specific parts yet. I could do that in a day or two and dump the SPD output from CPU-Z. You don't need PC2-6400 memory, PC2-5300 DDR2-667, or even PC2-4300 DDR2-533 should be fast enough.

I believe the ADLINK M-880 for Agilent is a custom build of the ADLINK M-945. The standard M-945 might not have the LVDS display connector populated. There might be other minor differences too. The M-880 also has a custom Agilent BIOS.

Pilatus:
Agilent 16800 series logic analyzer (for the EEVBLOG search engine)

Thanks gslick. I do have the disks for the OS as well as for the LA software. I will repurpose one of my SSD and experiment with that. Agilent 16800 series logic analyzer (for the search engine)

So far I find that XP with sp2 boots in about 1 min 40. Another post on this site claims an increase in time to over 4 min after just installing sp3. I'll stick with sp2 for the time being. Don't know what features I am losing by sticking with 3.70.0003

Interested to in the potential performance increase of adding RAM, though other postings on this site claim no improvement. I believe someone was successful installing Win7 with increased RAM and obtained same performance as XP. I'm not sure how much time I am willing to experiment with that though.  Cost of the RAM is pretty cheap, so I might just slap in a larger pair of memory sticks for good measure.

The M-945 has a 1Gb/s ethernet port while the M-880 only has 100Mb/s, so I'm not sure if the M880 is a derivative of the M-945.

I have obtained an owner's manual for the ADLINK M-945 motherboard and am posting it as an attachment.

Pilatus:
FAN NOISE

I was getting a shrill noise from the fans at the back, reflected by the wall. Highly irritating, in that I would need to wear my noise cancelling earphones if working for any length of time. My quick and dirty solution was to place absorbing material on the wall, in this case a small terry cloth towel. This seems to absorb the high frequency noise. Works great so far. If I had some egg-crate foam that might work even better.

I might consider the inline resistance to the power wiring going to the fan as suggested in another post as a more permanent solution.

gslick:

--- Quote from: Pilatus on May 03, 2023, 08:11:12 am ---The M-945 has a 1Gb/s ethernet port while the M-880 only has 100Mb/s, so I'm not sure if the M880 is a derivative of the M-945.

--- End quote ---

The M-880 motherboard should have a PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_108C "Intel(R) PRO/1000 PM Network Connection" device on it. Without opening one up to take a look at the Ethernet controller chip on the motherboard near the RJ45 and PCIe connectors, I'm not sure if that is the 82573E controller mentioned in the M-945 datasheet. Regardless of the exact controller device, the M-880 motherboard should have a 1Gb capable Ethernet controller.


Another minor difference between the M-880 and the M-945 is that while the N-880 motherboard has the IDE and floppy connector footprints, they are not populated.

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