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Gould Ultima / Nicolet Accura DSO software needed.

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Parus:
Any luck yet?

Recently I have saved one of these with the repair of itś PSU. On the disk I found the original (UK) installation files and utilities. These will install a kernel plug-in in the OS for communication with the custom PCI card and the scope program. I have upgraded the Tyan board with a new PIII/1Ghz processor and more memory. With XP pro installed no problems, after that with W7 no luck. 

A manual and maybe some of the special intelli-probes would be very nice :)

Oscar

shakalnokturn:
Getting there slowly, it's mostly a working scope now.
I previously mentioned the CH4 front-end shielding having been removed... It does appear there's some kind of grounding problem on CH4, applying pressure on the front BNC's can add quite a bit if noise to that channel and others to a lesser extent.

Also a problem on 8 bit real time sampling at 2GS/s (4CH interleave) with maximum (1Mpt) sampling memory it just won't display the waveform. I'm not sure if this is a hardware fault or software problem.
Can other users confirm how their Ultima 500 reacts to this setting?

It would be great if you could get an archive of the original install files online somehow for people with dead hard disks. KO4BB's website is one of the most reliable places to go for TE documentation and has an upload option.
I'll try and upload the user manual there soon.

As for the dedicated probes I've never ever seen any around but must admit to never having searched.

Parus:
Sounds like the huge thermal cycles have done their job, That board really gets hot with 160W on itś legs. Specially on the right hand side (channel 4) with the airflow on the bottom going from left to right. Inspection and reflow of that complete area, but most likely you have done that already.

I will create some zip archives of the different versions of installers, automated measurement scripting and reporting software Proview and put it on KO4BB if i can find it all together. The old HD is quite a mess with several Gb'ś of rubbish and many backups of the same.

For your question about the upper limit behaviour i have no answer yet. After many experiments i am now putting it all back together and a sticky message came up  about missing/corrupt skew and ets calibration data. A auto calibration does not solve this, "see manual for special calibration instructions" but i don't have ...... (little hint: my email is public ;D). Inserting a old calibration file from one of the many backups might solve the message but this is not the way to go.

Still some work to do.

shakalnokturn:
Yes I noticed that (front) end got quite a bit hotter than the CH1 side.
I'll do a close inspection of the solders or bulk reflow I only hope it isn't the preamp ASIC that's whacked.

I'm not sure this could affect your ETS/skew error, mentioning it just in case:
After patching up my cracked resistor network (CH2) I was experiencing some intermittent offset problems on CH3, poking around at the acquisition board while running lead me to the resistor network on that channel. Problem was solved by reflowing the solders where the pins connect to the ceramic.

It's worth checking the power connector to the acquisition board and power header solders on acquisition board they run warm.

A couple of other disturbing findings about this scope: A lot of interconnect is through longish FFC's.
Hooking a probe to the probe compensation output without attaching the ground clip you can expect some DC offset, the current draw from the front panel makes the probe comp. output above ground...
Similarly there are PS test points at the rear middle of the frontend board. On my scope the +/-5V supplies only read around +/-4.85V most of the loss is in the FFC's between the acquisition and frontend board.

Parus:
I have uploaded a zip to KO4BB with the utilities, a OS system driver for the Jungo PCI of the Tyan PC board, 3 full setup versions (V3.05/7/8) and a GUI only V3.10 that runs fine on the 3.08 drivers.  Many thanks to Shakalnokturn (and Kowilli) for the 3.10 GUI and a preview of the manual.  Shakalnokturn has also uploaded the manual to KO4BB, so soon the full package is available to download for those in need with a crashed or missing HD.

Yeh i have noticed some weird and shortcut engineering in it's design. Looks like it was a quick and dirty HP Infinium clone job with the same look and feel to get a piece of that market share for way less $ (but still 15K $). Don't let these things fool you, it may just be so by design. It got me with the repair of it's PSU, chasing rabbits based on some weird measurements. Just wondering how many of these where sold, and how many are still alive today.

My skew/ets problem is not an error, its just wants a calibration of that (with a very sticky boxed message)  but this is not a part of the standard auto calibration and there is nothing in the manual about it. I have been swtching around al ot between different OS's and setup versions and one time it did a not-so-standard calibration, but how i got it there i can't remember anymore. I was busy getting the system to work stable,, and calibration was step 2. It's a bit time consuming.

btw. 4-ch interleaved, full BW, 8 bit is one of the auto calibration tests

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