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| Gould Ultima / Nicolet Accura DSO software needed. |
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| shakalnokturn:
Some news on this epic mess... I've been running round in circles a little but have made some small progress: Received the PLX9050 from China, it took me some time to unwrap it when I eventually did it was clearly a pulled and cleaned part not a NOS one, some of the corner pins had lost about 1/3 of their width. Ebay seller is "yyen4650" just in case you want to avoid him too. Anyway not having anything better I took a couple of thermal images of the original running then replaced the PCI9050 (it's only TQFP-160). Results were exactly the same PCI card not found, PCI9050 temperature exact same. No luck with the PLX monitor software either. Not knowing if my replacement PCI9050 was actually any good I started looking for another source, while looking around I discovered that some dual RS-232 boards used the PCI9052, downloaded the datasheet to check compatibility. As far as I can tell they should be interchangeable, just the 9050 is long obsolete while the 9052 isn't. Scrolling through the PCI9052 datasheet I came across this: "Notes: 2k-bit devices such as the FM93CS56, are not compatible. The PCI9052 does not support serial EEPROMs that do not support sequential reads (such as the FM93C46L)." Oh, crap! That's precisely what I used a 93C46L... Bad!!! One EEPROM replacement and programming later, the board was detected by windows and the Ultima.exe software able to run, which initialises the scope's front panel and brings up a window with the DSO traces and menus. Scope seems to be mainly working although it looks like a recalibration will be needed, I'll have to look into the cracked resistor network on CH2 too later. Next problem is getting the integrated LCD display running again. I was hoping for a dead backlight inverter but there's no display at all neither on the LCD or on the slow acquisition PCI card's VGA output. The integrated LCD is connected to 30 conductor FFC socket named SK2, the backlight is separate. LCD is a 10", NEC_NL8060AC26-11, 3x6 bit parallel bus model. The video path seems to be analog to digital through an AD9884A, then through U19 (EPM7128SLC84) before the LCD. The analog video goes through groups of AD8055 voltage feedback amplifiers, one group before the rear VGA output the other before the AD9884A. The problem is I can't seem to find the origin of the analog video anywhere on the board, AD8055 inputs all lead to SK1 - 15 conductor FFC connector on the rear of the board so i'm assuming the VGA source is elsewhere... The illustrations of the back of the scope on the user manual don't show any other VGA output than the one on the slow acquisition board, I have a separate VGA PCI board but that was likely dropped in by the previous owner. There's a "Microsoft SMS Mirror Driver" in the display adapters, I'm not sure how that works having never met it before. If another owner could confirm this it would be quite helpful. Then I'd have to try and discover the FFC pinout. |
| shakalnokturn:
Looking back at Kowilli's pictures I see there's a FPC from the his AGP graphics card VGA output so I suppose that answers one question - not the pinout unfortunately. |
| shakalnokturn:
The pinout for SK1 should be along these lines, a small doubt on the Sync lines, confident enough for the others. FFC pin 1 is furthest from the rear mounting bracket. 1- GND 2- Red IN 3- GND 4- Green IN 5- GND 6- Blue IN 7- GND 8- GND 9- GND 10- DDC-SCL 11- Vsync? (100k Pull-up, U19-54) 12- GND 13- Hsync? (100k Pull-down, 68R->U19-14) 14- DDC-SDA 15- GND |
| shakalnokturn:
SK1 pinout confirmed. I tried with a couple of AGP graphics cards, the first was a Radeon 9200SE with a convenient 15 pin header for the VGA output and DVI as a second output. That was good enough to get the internal LCD working. There were a couple of issues: I liked the idea of having the M$ Windows desktop available on an external LCD while the internal scope screen was still active. This worked, but annoyingly on a cold start the primary display is DVI so the Ultima software won't automatically come up on the internal screen. There were also some hard to describe display glitches made worse by mouse movement bad enough to want to try another graphics card for comparison. Second graphics card was an older still SIS6328, on the whole it works better than with the ATI one, there are still a few glitches in the display but not enough to be a real bother. The PCI slow acquisition / VGA to digital LCD adapter board is a strange setup... During the Win 2k start-up screen the 640x480 is scaled to fit the 800 horizontally on the internal LCD while the 480 isn't stretched to fit 600 pixels, it's displayed with a large black bar at the bottom. While I had the front panel removed to reattach the HDD (LCD must be removed to access HDD...) I dumped the configuration EPC1441 EEPROM for the front panel FPGA. Next problem: I've removed the frontend PCB to look at the broken resistor network on CH2, once again it looks as if I've been sold the worse of 2 or 3 scopes, the lower shielding for CH4 had previously been removed and refitted without solder. (I hope there isn't another surprise problem hiding somewhere in the coupling relays on CH4...) The resistor network seems to be a 8 resistor ladder of which I was able to measure 5 on the cracked network, 3 values are unknown because the resistors themselves are cracked. I also measured some values between pins on a good network removed from another channel. (Attached schematic and values/measurements.) Is there an easy way to calculate the 3 unknown resistors (Ra, Rb, Rc) from what I have? I'm sure it's possible but my maths are a little rusty... |
| shakalnokturn:
Removing pins 2, 3, 5 on the resistor network breaks all parallel connections, I was able to measure all resistors separately which worked out quicker than solving the equations for me. Previous network sketch is wrong for one value due to a link assumed cut on the split component that wasn't. Confirmed good enough values attached. It turns out as an almost R-2R ladder. |
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