ok guys, I gathered all my strength and opened this beast of oscilloscopes on Saturday morning and I have not slept for 2 days
so please bear with me
I have taken lots of photos. I am posting a few of them here which show you the complete picture.
First of all, as I had predicted, LC684 schematics are totally useless with this scope as there is no resemblance between the two.
The front end circuitry is completely different but everybody here and on Lecroy Yahoo group said otherwise.
So using LC684 schematics was a no go.
However, as I had mentioned myself, LC574 schematics was much closer to LC584. In fact I found perfect match between the two in most
parts except the values of components (resistors) were different. Sure, there were some differences between the circuits, too, but it was minimal.
Their digital and processing parts could be very different though, I did not check.
The worst thing is that when you open up this thing, there is pretty much NO WAY to power it up outside the box and measure voltages.
Sure, I can imagine building a test gig with tons of jumper wires to connect them all up and put a big fan to cool it down but
I could not go that way as it is too scary and any slightest mistake would fry something. Besides I didn't have so many jumper wires to
connect all those connectors (see the pictures. The CPU board and power supply sit directly on top of the main board and their connectors
mate directly on board with no ribbon connectors)
So I am only restricted to DC OHM measurements and some DIODE measurements on board. Even this is scary and I am afraid that might
damage something but that is the only thing I can do for now. My multimeter is an Extech MM-570.
I have done hundreds (literally) of ohm measurements on board (only on the input front end sections) and the 4 channels looked all the same
everywhere except for one sub-circuit that I could notice a difference between ch.4 and the others. I have re-drawn that sub-circuit the way I extracted from the board and as you can see it is pretty much identical to the one from LC574 except for one small difference
at point C (the potentiometer does not exist in LC584).
Interestingly this sub-circuit goes on to make the OVERLOAD signal! However, note that it's all DC path and there is no SIGNAL coming in.
In fact the input signal from the BNC seems to have nothing to do with making the overload signal directly. In my opinion (correct me if I am wrong)
it is all based on temperature sensing of some sort. It is the same with LC684 albeit with a different circuitry. The BAV99 (CR4003) is
positioned very close to the input BNC and has a fairly large pad on board and as you can see in the pictures it is buried underneath
a gel/silicon type of material that I cannot figure what it is. The BAV99 and several components around it are covered with this gel/silicon
thing and the input relay (RL4000) is on the other side of the board beneath the BAV99 (CR4003). So my guess is that BAV99 is used as some
kind of temp sensor here. I think when it warms up it is supposed to generate something other than zero at pin 2 of AD705 (A4010) (point C) but
it could go either way (pos/neg), no?
One more thing is C4075, it is connected to ground on both sides! On board, there is a 4-5cm distance between the AD705 (A4010) which on
the other side of the board (underneath) and the BAV99 which is on top side and close to the BNC. You can see them all in pictures. Note that
there is another AD705 (A4001) on the top side of the board but that belongs to a different path. By the way, the board seems to be 2 layer (3 metal layers) since I cannot find some of the traces. They must be buried in the middle layer I guess.
Now, I have measured DC resistance between various points on this channel and compared with other channels and here are the
values (refer to my drawing of the schematics in lecroy1.pdf):
RAB=1.85K on ch.1,2,3 / 1.994K on ch.4
RAC, RBC=0.994K,1K on ch.4 / 0.961K,0.961K on others
RCD=14.25K on ch.4 / 7.28K on others
RDG=0.931K on all chnnels
RCG=13.45K on ch4 / 6.41K on others
RKB=10.42K on ch4 / 6.35K on others
RLA=14.46K on ch4 / 6.29K on others
DIODE measurements on BAV99 (I pushed my very sharp multimeter probes slightly into that silicon cover to touch the BAV99 legs)
left diode (E to ground) VF=0.57V and VR=1.3V on all channels
right diode (F to ground) VF=0.57V on all channels but VR=1.49V on ch4 and 1.29V on others ! ??
So my guess so far is that one diode in that BAV99 is faulty to some extent and therefore an OVERLOAD signal is created all the time.
In other words at point C there is an imbalance all the time due to asymmetry created by the schottky. what do you think? Or is it
the AD705 (A4010)??
On the other hand, I might be barking at the wrong tree here.... as I mentioned just based on DC OHM measurements at many many
points on the front ends I could not find any difference between the channels except the one above. However, the relays are all set to
one position and I cannot evaluate how they actually work. The current state of relays is exactly as shown in the schematics of LC574 and
the contacts that are closed right now are very good (<0.15ohm)
with that silicon thingy that covers the elements around the schottky (BAV99) I cannot even take it out and I am afraid peeling that
thing off the board....
here are the links to photos:
https://www.4shared.com/s/fvTYBKnI-eihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fu6OuiBGxeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fFoDdoemPeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/f6o9hpmDPeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fcobbqHR5eihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fn5KSmAMicahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fLyntxaqRcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/ffqxR2ggtcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fsPtP9L1eeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/ffqtw41Gdcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fxr3y4EHtcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fGS6d9p8Keihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fOa6fMVmFeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fp0-Ma9K1cahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fi88cI8lUeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fBqC9yKQReihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fdCxumxGyeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fIKY_-nlfcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fMB9mSCUWeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/f9fTVNixVcahttps://www.4shared.com/s/fA1QxfiXMeihttps://www.4shared.com/s/fGUeQMYfpei