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

[Xtremexp]

Hello all,

I also joined the club to repair 54845A. Thanks to the forum members, My unit was failing ADC and FISO tests on one channel, I removed the ADC and found one pin supressed, I cleaned and reinstalled ADC module and the error went away.
I have VIN:025, motherboard has two USB port header, enabled USB in BIOS and installed drivers for USB mass storage. Now I can use USB. this is good.
I cloned HDD, if someone needs anything then I can provide it.

My next goal is to replace HDD so that I have backup plan if I mess something and break software.

I want to add USB test option, has anyone tried to add USB test option on these units? How to install it? I feel like this instrument is very basic, I am looking if there are any way to make this machine worth these days.

Thanks!

[BoscoLab]

Hello,

I have an HP 54845A with software revision A.02.51 and an Agilent 54832B with software revision A.01.10. I am looking for the latest software revision for both. Preferably a direct image which I can copy to a CF card. Who can provide me with a ready installed image for 54845A and 54832B?
 
I have tried to install the ISO I found here on 54832B. Always with the error 0x0B read fault, the ISO is corrupted.  On the 54845A I can't find a way to boot from CD. 

It would be a great help if someone can provide me with a suitable image with the latest revisions for both devices. 

Thank you!

[Tony_G]

I can't help you with a CF card image but I was able to boot and upgrade my 54845A using the images in the OneDrive link I shared earlier by getting a MicroSolutions Backpack Parallel Port CDROM drive:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204549289902?hash=item2fa01677ae:g:1QMAAOSws7NlXS6X

Note: I have no idea who this EBay user is or if the drive works, I just grabbed the link as it was the same as the one I bought.

You might also be able to boot it using an IDE CDROM drive but I didn't have one of those and, at the time, the cost was the same for the parallel one as an internal IDE one.

As for the 54832B, I can't really help there as I don't have one and so I never checked those ISO files when I grabbed the folder off the HP FTP site

I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful.

TonyG

[alpher]

Here's a link to my images of my 54845A , windows ME images are based on Intel I810 chipset mobo installs.
Theres one with the version 45 (latest that I know of) but I think it's win98 on an original AMD mobo, I did not like it as far as I remember.
Hope it will be of some help.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w3_B7vnozDZKYdfuwL9VvBMuRDxwnoF2?usp=sharing

[BoscoLab]

I can't help you with a CF card image but I was able to boot and upgrade my 54845A using the images in the OneDrive link I shared earlier by getting a MicroSolutions Backpack Parallel Port CDROM drive:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204549289902?hash=item2fa01677ae:g:1QMAAOSws7NlXS6X

Note: I have no idea who this EBay user is or if the drive works, I just grabbed the link as it was the same as the one I bought.

You might also be able to boot it using an IDE CDROM drive but I didn't have one of those and, at the time, the cost was the same for the parallel one as an internal IDE one.

As for the 54832B, I can't really help there as I don't have one and so I never checked those ISO files when I grabbed the folder off the HP FTP site

I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful.

TonyG

Hello Tony,

can you tell me how you updated your 54845A? Which files did you have to use and in which order? Maybe you can document the update process?

Thank you! 

[BoscoLab]

Here's a link to my images of my 54845A , windows ME images are based on Intel I810 chipset mobo installs.
Theres one with the version 45 (latest that I know of) but I think it's win98 on an original AMD mobo, I did not like it as far as I remember.
Hope it will be of some help.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w3_B7vnozDZKYdfuwL9VvBMuRDxwnoF2?usp=sharing

Hello alpher,

thanks for the files. I think Windows 98 is the right way to go for the 54845A. What is the difference in your images between "43 A w98SE only c" and "43 A w98SE" ?

Thank you! 

[Tony_G]

UPDATE: I just watched my video again and realized that my initial memory was faulty - I've updated the post to reflect that.

Hello Tony,

can you tell me how you updated your 54845A? Which files did you have to use and in which order? Maybe you can document the update process?

Thank you! 

Happy to.

As I mentioned above, I grabbed the MicroSolutions Backpack Parallel Port CDROM as this is what was recommended by Agilent in the doc "InfiniiumUpgradeRecovery.pdf".

To upgrade your non-LS-120 scope to A.04.xx, you will need the A.04.xx upgrade software on CD and the appropriate boot disk on a 3.5” floppy. You may contact Agilent technical support for copies of these disks, or download the files at the locations given below. The boot disk supports the MicroSolutions model 167550 Backpack CD-ROM drive. You may need to modify the files for compatibility with your drive.

There is a floppy disk image that I created - It is called "Bootimage.ima" - I used WinImage to write that to a 3.5" floppy and then I could boot the device with the Backpack installed and access the upgrade image. I would expect that you could use an IDE CDROM drive instead of the Backpack, you'll just have to have the right drivers in config.sys & autoexec.bat on the boot disk. Other than those files it is just a standard Win98 boot floppy.

To get to A.04.50, you need to start with A.04.30 and then upgrade that with the A.04.50 files.

The files you need to start with are in the "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\4_3\4_3_Recovery" folder. The files in those folders need to be burnt to CD, you can just use the standard Windows method to burn them as they aren't bootable. I put all the files from Disk 1-3 onto the one CD I think.

Once you have them in the drive you run Ghost.exe from the CD and select the HP548RCV.GHO" file. Ghost (this is just a drive imaging tool) will push the new bits onto the disk and you should be at A.04.30.

I actually have a video of what I did to do the reinstall/upgrade on YT:

https://youtu.be/L49qug1oGuo?si=sh1auQQ3c-b901NC&t=536

Now to get to A.04.50 I used the CDROMUPG.EXE utility - This is in the ZIP folder "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\bootdisk\CD_Boot.zip".

I really don't remember what files it looked for but I would start with the ones in "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\4_5\4_5_upg.zip". These have unique filenames so you should just be able to get them onto the same CD you used for A.04.30. Boot from the floppy again, run CDROMUPG.EXE and then follow the prompts.

I covered that in this video:

https://youtu.be/x9FUXcWENoU?si=lNKwF6aCO14yqmsr&t=142

This is all from rewatching my videos and memory so my apologies if I've missed a step but it should be fairly straight forward.

Hope this helps.

TonyG

[alpher]

Hello alpher,

thanks for the files. I think Windows 98 is the right way to go for the 54845A. What is the difference in your images between "43 A w98SE only c" and "43 A w98SE" ?

Thank you! 

Only c means that there are no other drives like CDrom in this image it was step by step process, you can ignore it and go for the latest.

[BoscoLab]

UPDATE: I just watched my video again and realized that my initial memory was faulty - I've updated the post to reflect that.

Hello Tony,

can you tell me how you updated your 54845A? Which files did you have to use and in which order? Maybe you can document the update process?

Thank you! 

Happy to.

As I mentioned above, I grabbed the MicroSolutions Backpack Parallel Port CDROM as this is what was recommended by Agilent in the doc "InfiniiumUpgradeRecovery.pdf".

To upgrade your non-LS-120 scope to A.04.xx, you will need the A.04.xx upgrade software on CD and the appropriate boot disk on a 3.5” floppy. You may contact Agilent technical support for copies of these disks, or download the files at the locations given below. The boot disk supports the MicroSolutions model 167550 Backpack CD-ROM drive. You may need to modify the files for compatibility with your drive.

There is a floppy disk image that I created - It is called "Bootimage.ima" - I used WinImage to write that to a 3.5" floppy and then I could boot the device with the Backpack installed and access the upgrade image. I would expect that you could use an IDE CDROM drive instead of the Backpack, you'll just have to have the right drivers in config.sys & autoexec.bat on the boot disk. Other than those files it is just a standard Win98 boot floppy.

To get to A.04.50, you need to start with A.04.30 and then upgrade that with the A.04.50 files.

The files you need to start with are in the "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\4_3\4_3_Recovery" folder. The files in those folders need to be burnt to CD, you can just use the standard Windows method to burn them as they aren't bootable. I put all the files from Disk 1-3 onto the one CD I think.

Once you have them in the drive you run Ghost.exe from the CD and select the HP548RCV.GHO" file. Ghost (this is just a drive imaging tool) will push the new bits onto the disk and you should be at A.04.30.

I actually have a video of what I did to do the reinstall/upgrade on YT:

https://youtu.be/L49qug1oGuo?si=sh1auQQ3c-b901NC&t=536

Now to get to A.04.50 I used the CDROMUPG.EXE utility - This is in the ZIP folder "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\bootdisk\CD_Boot.zip".

I really don't remember what files it looked for but I would start with the ones in "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\4_5\4_5_upg.zip". These have unique filenames so you should just be able to get them onto the same CD you used for A.04.30. Boot from the floppy again, run CDROMUPG.EXE and then follow the prompts.

I covered that in this video:

https://youtu.be/x9FUXcWENoU?si=lNKwF6aCO14yqmsr&t=142

This is all from rewatching my videos and memory so my apologies if I've missed a step but it should be fairly straight forward.

Hope this helps.

TonyG

I was able to successfully restore the 54845A to version 4.3 with a new CF card.  When Windows boots the first time, drivers are installed and a crash occurs, but after a reboot it continues.
I could not perform the update to 4.5. The cdromupg.exe did not find any files. I tried everything but it did not work.

I've made good progress so far. Maybe we can still solve the update problem. 

Now I'm just looking for the latest software for the 54832B.

Thank you Tony!

[Tony_G]

Ok, that took way longer to work out than I expected...

My scope is in a 19" rack mount so I can't easily get to the back of it without moving a bunch of stuff - BTW The scope mount looks great and the little pull-out is a touchpad for the mouse:



Anyway, I ran up a Win98SE VM to test it out - Needed to work out how to get Win98 and the latest VMWare to work together, needed to address the TLB bug (The solution is Patcher9x if you're interested), deployed the 4.3 scope GHO, patched it and then tried to jog my memory to work out how to run CDROMUPG.

Ended up just opening the CDROMUPG.EXE file in a binary editor and trolling the resource strings - What did I find? Well, it turns out that the HP devs hardcoded the file locations and expect the CDROM to be drive F: (there are also other locations like the one TheSteve pointed out earlier in the thread).

Anyway, if you make your CD the F: drive then you can just have the files in "54845A\54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\4_5\4_5_upg.zip" in the root of the iso (basically at F:\) and then you can run CDROMUPG and it should update the device to A.04.50.

I still can't get the scope image to finish booting but I'm fairly certain this is because it is a VM.

Hope this helps.

TonyG

[Tony_G]

Hey All,

For anyone coming here in the future, I've created a single ISO that contains:

• HP Scope Recovery Image A.04.30 (use ghost.exe to restore the image)
• HP Scope Upgrade to A.04.50 (load the mouse driver and run cdromupg.exe)
• Floppy Boot Image with MicroSolutions Backpack Drivers (I use WinImage to write these boot images to a floppy)
• Floppy Boot Image for Windows 98 SE (this is just the standard disk from the Win98 product)
• Patcher9x-0.8.50 Boot Image to patch Win9X to work in a VM or more modern CPU hardware)

The file is "HPScope4X.iso" and you can get it directly here or from the link I shared earlier in this thread.

Hope this helps.

TonyG

[Tony_G]

Now I'm just looking for the latest software for the 54832B.

Did you try the recovery ISO at "54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\5483x" - 5483XRecovery2_1.iso?

If you did, then unfortunately I can't help further as I never had one of those scopes to try it on.

Sorry.

TonyG

[BoscoLab]

Now I'm just looking for the latest software for the 54832B.

Did you try the recovery ISO at "54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\5483x" - 5483XRecovery2_1.iso?

If you did, then unfortunately I can't help further as I never had one of those scopes to try it on.

Sorry.

TonyG

I have successfully used the recovery ISO at "54845A\548xx\Upg_Rec\5483x" - 5483XRecovery2_1.iso on the Agilent 54832B. Then booted the update directly from CD and installed it. Here is a screenshot after the installation and update. The self-test and calibration was successful.

Thanks Tony!

[Tony_G]

Congrats - Did you get the 54845A up to A.04.50 as well?

TonyG

[BoscoLab]

Congrats - Did you get the 54845A up to A.04.50 as well?

TonyG

I have not yet updated the 54845A. Could I change the CD drive letter to F after booting the floppy disk? Or do you suggest something else?

Rudolf

[Tony_G]

You can just change the drive letter used by MSCDEX in autoexec.bat - "/L:F" will mount the drive to F: - You might be able to use "assign" to redirect F: to the cdrom drive but it really is just easier to change the letter in autoexec.

I would simply write the Win98SE boot disk image to a floppy, change the letter to F, boot, and run cdromupg - You don't need to change anything on the device, just the boot floppy. You can then reboot and go back to whatever config you want.

TonyG

[BoscoLab]

I finally finished the update on the HP 54845A, now it has A.04.50. Thanks for the help! 

Rudolf

[Tony_G]

Good to hear - Glad I could help.

TonyG

[ARF]

I'll update the topic. I recently received 54845A. At first glance, everything works, but during calibration I received an error on one channel. Any advices? I remember that in 54820 oscilloscopes it was necessary to clean the sockets for ADC modules.

[nctnico]

You can try and clean the sockets but it is also possible the input module is defective.

[ARF]

So far I have not taken any action. Yesterday I just went to bed, and today I repeated the calibration and received errors on all channels. It looks like there is some problem with the calibration signal itself.

[nctnico]

Did you connect the calibration cables? If yes, then try a different BNC cables. BNC cables are prone to failure.