LeCroy 24MXs-B SSD and Win7 Upgrade

[rsbonini]

I recently picked up a LeCroy Wavesurfer MXs-B for a pretty good deal.  Still in the original box with un-opened probes.  Really pleased with it.  At my first real engineering job I cut my teeth on a Wavesurfer 424 and have always preferred the MAUI control interface since.

That being said I'm a little concerned with the fact that it has an HDD which will eventually die and render me scopeless once again.  Additionally I have an original QA400 audio analyzer that still pulls its wieght, but requires a dedicated 13" Win7 laptop on my bench since my main machine runs Win10 and Linux, and the software for it won't run on those.  It'd be absolutely stellar to run the software on the LeCroy instead and free up that space.

My initial attempt was to clone the drive using Macrium reflect onto a new SSD preserving the exact same partitions along with some unallocated space.  When attempting to boot the scope I got an MBR Error 3, the Acronis recovery F11 was no longer presented, and it wanted to run CHDSK every boot...  Not a great result.

I tried getting into BIOS to see if I could convince it to boot from a USB, get into recovery mode, and then rebuild the MBR locally.  The BIOS is password protected and nothing I could find online seemed to work.

Then I tried to see if i could run the recovery process, but Acronis simply failed when I tried to activate the F11 boot recovery option.

I guess my plan at this point is to see if I can rebuild the software on a blank SSD.  My understanding of this process is:

1) create C and D partitions
2) install windows on C
3) copy drive D data from the original HDD
4) install X-Stream software (firmware is already latest as per LeCroy website)

To those with more knowledge/experience with these mahcines than myself.  Does this seem correct?  Any pitfalls to watchout for?  BIOS password?

On a side note, it seems that some of these units shipped with a Win7 install.  Could this unit (2013 vintage) run windows 7?

[Momchilo]

Hi,
you can create C and D partitions and install Windows and X-Stream manually. You don't need anything else except the calibration data. It's a hidden folder in D:\
This is the only software piece that you can't recover if lost and it's very important. Just copy this folder to a save backup place before you're doing anything else with the scope.

But cloning C and D is also possible. I did this more than once with Lecroy scopes. I used the freeware tool DriveImage XML for the backups and recoveries. It worked perfectly fine. I think I had to set the C partition to active in diskpart for Windows to boot.

Did you try the BIOS password "lcrsys"?

[darkstar49]

W7 support on the gen1 (M)Xs-B (PS/2 ports on the I/O shield) is not granted as far as I recall...
If you have gen2 (no PS/2 ports, and the 'red' acq board), it should be OK.

[rsbonini]

I received some advice from Wuerstchenhund to try doing a drive clone with Macrium installed on the scope instead of having the drive connected to a separate PC.  I finally got around to trying this.  After cloning and swapping out the drives the scope booted up no problem first time.  I was also able to get QA400 software installed and working.  For now I've switched back to the hdd, but I have a fully-working drop-in backup at this point.  A huge relief.

Here are some photos of the scope:












An upgrade to win7 would provide built-in ssd trim support (unlike Windows XP) and is an appealing option as a result.

The scope does not have PS/2 ports, an the acquisition board is red, so based on the previous post this should be able to work with windows 7?  Can anyone else confirm this, or provide additional information?

[rsbonini]

Minor update on this effort.  Primary goal is to get an SSD installed to mitigate risk of drive failure.  Win 7 upgrade is primarily because Win XP isn't able to TRIM SSD drives. 

Progress:
1)  Win 7 Starter installed and seems to run just fine on the machine.
2)  D: drive created and everything from the original hard drive copied over.
3)  Installed The DSO software from LeCroy's website.  Seemed to go ok but it requested to upgrade the firmware on the FPGA which was declined because I didn't want to break hardware working with the original drive.
4)  Tried to installed the XStream drivers also from the LeCroy site but keep getting a "no LeCroy hardware" error message.
5)  Was able to start the DSO software but it gave a "no calibration data found" error message, so it wasn't able to load the cal data.

Any ideas out there on why it didn't pick up the D:/Calibration folder and/or data therein?  Thanks!

For those who might find it useful, the BIOS password is "lcrsys".

[rsbonini]

So it appears I may have broken something...

After some searching I found this thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/lecroy-x-stream-calibration-data-and-storage/, discussing the recovery process on these scopes.  I noticed that the volume label hadn't been changed to USERDATA.  I reloaded everything including win7 from scratch, renamed the volume, and started the DSO software, and no warning error regarding calibration pops up, I thought everything was good to go. 

Unfortunately not so fast.  Once the DSO was running something looked wrong immediately.  I saw this very consistent 3MHz noise across all channels:



I don't think its environmental as a short across the inputs makes no change to the signal....

I figured that there was some software issue and so switched to the original hard drive that came with the scope.  The noise remains!!  Checking the calibration files shows that they're the same files from 2013, so all the cal data should be fine.  How could software changes have caused this to happen?

Just as an additional note, here is the FPGA update message that came up after installing the DSO software, which I declined:

[ollopa]

Why didn't you upgrade the FPGA?

Do the inputs work if you connect a probe to the CAL input or do you ONLY see this 3MHz signal?  If you change the input coupling to GND then does the signal go away?

My first guess is that you are in simulation mode, possibly due to not upgrading the FPGA.  The simulated waveforms are about 3MHz AC sines about 258mV PK-PK.  These aren't real -- they're dummy data generated when there is a problem talking to the acquisition hardware.  Double-check your drivers and make sure the FPGA matches what firmware expects.

[edit] I just noticed that your current FPGA version is reported as -1.  Could you have disturbed any cables between your boards?  Seems like it is not able to talk to the FPGA at all.

[rsbonini]

Thanks for the previous replies, you were right on the money!  Double checked all of the connections and nothing seemed out of place but figured it couldn't hurt to reseat them anyway.  After rebooting the scope was working again.

Oddly though the touch-screen no longer worked.  To check if it was a hardware issue I switched back to the original drive and the touchscreen worked immediately.  So after switching back to the Win7 drive I reloaded drivers, played with USB settings, etc but couldn't get the touchscreen working again.

Starting from scratch, I did a clean install of Windows 7, installed X-Stream with the additional driver pack, and everything seemed to be working great through about 2 or 3 reboots.  Shut everything down and when turned back on this morning the touchscreen was again no longer working.  Pressing the "Touch Screen" front panel button just gives a "Can't access touch-screen device" error message in lower left corner of DSO. 

Doing a little digging on this there's a reference to a touchscreen driver fix for a different LeCroy scope on this thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/upgrading-mainboard-in-lecroy-dda-3000-(aka-wavepro-7300a)/600/, but not sure it applies here.

Is this a known issue?  Why would it work at first but then stop working after a few restarts?


 

[ollopa]

I don't know the 24MXs hardware but some LeCroy scopes used a serial (as in RS232) touch panel with drivers licensed from a 3rd party (Touch-Base UPDD: https://touch-base.com/drivers).  The touchscreen on/off button only works with the customized and licensed driver and the XP version of the driver is incompatible with Win7.  People try to find a compatible replacement from some other product and run it.

So my question for you is do you have a USB or a serial touch panel?  You can try to copy the drivers from your original disk and hope they're compatible but most likely not.  You can also download the UPDD trial version and see if that works.

[rsbonini]

Played around with this further, tried some other drivers and update tools.  The touchscreen did start working again but stopped after rebooting.  Don't think it was anything I did as repeating these actions didn't bring it back again.  It may be that it works when a new USB device is plugged in and USB discovery happens as I think I've observed this pattern twice but can't be sure yet.

There is mention on another forum of someone else observing this intermittent functioning of the touchscreen on reboot after a win7 upgrade.

As many are probably already aware, the touchscreen on these units is a USB device, so the serial device driver fix for other scopes doesn't apply.

[rsbonini]

This is an old thread but figured posting the info here may be useful.  Someone on the LeCroy groups.io responded to a post there regarding a driver build package in the files section there.  Carefully read through the documentation, followed the instructions, compiled driver, and now the touchscreen works perfectly!

[m k]

Can you be more specific?
Maybe it's something more general.

I have an old but newest available TV dongle driver that can survive anything but a shutdown.
After that the device must be reconnected before it is recognized.

[tv84]

Look in this thread.

[perdrix]

This is an old thread but figured posting the info here may be useful.  Someone on the LeCroy groups.io responded to a post there regarding a driver build package in the files section there.  Carefully read through the documentation, followed the instructions, compiled driver, and now the touchscreen works perfectly!

That would be me To save time here's the link to the driver DL https://groups.io/g/LeCroyOwnersGroup/files/Windows%207%20Touch%20Screen%20Driver%20for%20WR%20Xi%20and%20Xi-A%20%28may%20also%20work%20with%20WS%29

I'd also emphasise that reading the documentation carefully is important!