Oh NO! I'm never buying any Agilent Keysight equipment ever again!

[bsgd]

I thought Keysight claimed some crazy MTBF for their scopes?

They claim 250000 hours for DSOX3000T series. http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5992-0140EN.pdf?id=2545408
See page 36.

Well, that was off by about 4 orders of magnitude according to the OP...

Yes, off by 4 orders of magnitude. Twice.

There is a thread on the Keysight forums that mentions a potential fix for scopes with firmware >=2.39:  https://community.keysight.com/thread/24094?q=boot

Apparently, if you have the latest firmware and you get the blank screen of death, the scope may allow you to reload the firmware from USB.  My scope apparently has an earlier firmware revision (I don't remember what it is), so that wasn't an option.  Going from the Keysight forum thread, I recommend that everyone update their firmware to the latest version NOW so that you can potentially avoid having to send the scope to the manufacturer.

Since it's evidently possible to reload the firmware, it doesn't appear to be a hardware problem (at least not a permanent one).  Perhaps some type of EM/power line susceptibility that corrupts the firmware?

This is good (and bad) to know. Why does the firmware gets corrupted?

[nctnico]

I'm wondering: does the scope power on at all (some lights go on) or is it doing nothing. If it is doing nothing it could be a simple problem in the power supply.

[skipjackrc4]

I'm wondering: does the scope power on at all (some lights go on) or is it doing nothing. If it is doing nothing it could be a simple problem in the power supply.

The scope's lights and fan come on, so the power supply at least isn't completely dead (I don't know about all the voltage rails, and I'm not going to open it up to check while it's under warranty). 

[tautech]

I'm wondering: does the scope power on at all (some lights go on) or is it doing nothing. If it is doing nothing it could be a simple problem in the power supply.

RTFM thread.
PLL error

[nctnico]

I'm wondering: does the scope power on at all (some lights go on) or is it doing nothing. If it is doing nothing it could be a simple problem in the power supply.

RTFM thread.
PLL error

The first scope didn't turn on and now there is someone else with the same symptoms and I (vaguely) recall someone else with a piece of equipment from Keysight having firmware issues which prevented it from booting. I agree the PLL error is something different and it may well be the OP got a replacement from the rejects shelve indeed.

[D3f1ant]

What pisses me off with keysight gear in my country is the insane markup the local agent puts on it.

[Robaroni]

I'm not sure, linear supplies weren't that bad, they used less parts than SMPS and all those years of working out SMPS capacitance, and my favorite problem cap the tantalum. If you just go from the parts count, the more parts, the greater chance of failure - SMPS loses.
We went to SMPS, not because it was better but because it was cheaper. Give me a three terminal regulator in a linear supply, easy to fix, less parts and pretty robust.

Rob

Linear supplies are fine if you can tolerate the size, weight, heat and loss of efficiency.

We're talking about endurance and lots of power supplies still use linear power for low noise and robustness.

Rob

[Robaroni]

At school we have many Agilent 33220A AWGs and most of them have an erratic rotary encoder after 7 years or so.

When they were Agilent I replaced mine for a couple of bucks each and I think they sent them to me for free. It must cost a lot to call yourself Keysight!

Rob

[tautech]

What pisses me off with keysight gear in my country is the insane markup the local agent puts on it.

Yeah, I used to think the same until I started importing Siglent.

If there's not a lot of stock turnover and the not stocked requested models need be indented the hidden costs that the reseller has jumps significantly and erodes their profitability. 

Add to that our wildly fluctuating exchange rate and local taxes of 15% and we look with envy at the pricing in especially the US market. Even attempts to source direct from the US (and most other places) lumber us with the same currency exchange problems not to mention the 15% GST for all imports into NZ over US$300 value, freight included! 

In attempts to offer fair pricing I try to work with international RRP's plus local taxes and just suck up most of the hidden cost but that's not easy to do with a large company with much higher operating costs and overheads.

[bsgd]

I'm wondering: does the scope power on at all (some lights go on) or is it doing nothing. If it is doing nothing it could be a simple problem in the power supply.

RTFM thread.
PLL error

The first scope didn't turn on and now there is someone else with the same symptoms and I (vaguely) recall someone else with a piece of equipment from Keysight having firmware issues which prevented it from booting. I agree the PLL error is something different and it may well be the OP got a replacement from the rejects shelve indeed.

My first unit would not turn on: the fan did come on and the button lights started to blink in an infinite cycle. The screen never came on.
My second unit turns on fine but after 2 hours exihibited a PLL error on the screen. All channels became very noisy and a message pops p saying the unit found a PLL hardware error and must be sent for repair. After a few power cycles the error started to appear much faster and then when the unit was sent to Keysight it only took a few minutes after power on for the error message to appear.

I dont wanna judge Keysight like this, but I'm not happy at all getting a defective replacement unit since they knew my warranty was just about to expire (they even told me how lucky I was to find a defect with so little time for the warranty to expire) and then sent me a replacement unit with a pretty hard to diagnose problem, since the oscilloscope had to be left on for hours before anything went wrong.

I really hope I'm not dealing with Keysight as someone suggested, but some stupid 3rd party company wich is not up to Keysight standards. Anyway, if this is the case, Keysight should never let them use their logo and call themselves 'Keysight Brazil'. If I'm actually dealing with Keysight, I must confess Im completely dissapointed by their service and lack of competence and understanding.

[coppice]

IMHO the older test equipment is just as prone to failure as more recent test equipment.

Do you honestly believe this?

Yep, I honestly believe this. In the 70s and 80s HP and Tek equipment had to be repaired a lot. It was so expensive that it HAD to be built to be highly repairable. Since they were basically defence companies at the time, they had to provide all the documentation and components needed for their customers to repair equipment in house, beyond the 90 days warranty. Now that they supply a lot more equipment to commercial users than defence ones they can keep most repairs in house, and not reveal too much information. When things go wrong now the consequences are much greater, but the frequency of failures is low these days.

[marmad]

Yep, I honestly believe this. In the 70s and 80s HP and Tek equipment had to be repaired a lot. It was so expensive that it HAD to be built to be highly repairable.

Sorry, I just don't agree. And I'm afraid I'd have to see actual stats comparing failure/breakdown rates over the years to be convinced otherwise. I have HP and Tek equipment (as well as more common equipment) from the '70s and early '80s which continues to function perfectly... but nothing from the '90s.

Since they were basically defence companies at the time, they had to provide all the documentation and components needed for their customers to repair equipment in house, beyond the 90 days warranty.

No, they weren't. If you mean they sold a lot of equipment to the military, of course they did (although often it was special, rad-hardened versions of models), but this has nothing to do with providing documentation. I have a number of devices from the period (synthesizers, tape recorders, amplifiers, etc) from other companies that provided the exact same level of documentation.

Now that they supply a lot more equipment to commercial users than defence ones they can keep most repairs in house, and not reveal too much information.

Again, nothing to do with this - it's SOP across most companies that build electronic devices.

[Sbampato12]

In brazil Keysight has a office (and a cal lab) in Barueri (Sao Paulo). I don't thing this is a third part.
Last year I was there to visit their office. And always I needed replacement parts they were great with me. But I never needed warranty services, so I can't speak about that.

Maybe could be interesting to buy a Warranty after my one expires..... (I have a 2000x and a 3000x, if the 2000x costs that much, I prefer do not think about the 3000x....)

[bsgd]

Probably you want to buy some extended warranty once Daniel has sorted out your problem.
Anyway, the first thing I did after getting my MSOX3104A back from service is extended its warranty to 2020. No, it is not cheap, but the feeling of assured and insured gives me confident using it.

I could consider that, IF it doesnt cost me more than a brand new equipment AND if Keysight really understands my problem and shows some interest in helping me. Otherwise, I just don't feel confident enough to have them as my main oscilloscope supplier, even though I already have a few units (including the one we're talking about here) which I cant take back and will have to deal with them if needed. You see, I really need reliability and I don't have the time to spend hours and hours on the phone and e-mail, just to get something simple sorted out. And this is whats going on right now... and even after so many hours, nothing was sorted with Keysight Brazil. All I got was an insane repair price and a message 'pay that or keep it defective'.

They even tried to charge me a technical evaluation fee of ~$150 dollars (Daniel also got this by e-mail), which made so pissed that they just decided to do me a 'favor' and not charge me that. Ridiculous! I don't need favors from Keysight, I just need to get some good service from what I thought was a reputable company.

[Robaroni]

I remember working with Tex and HP in the late 60's and 70's. Most of the failures were mechanical if I remember. Scratchy pots and switches and such. Most times it didn't cripple the instrument. Even the old nixie tube counters would lose a segment or a digit would flash but you worked around it.

Things today have gotten a lot more complex and the more complex the greater chance of failures. So maybe if we made yesterdays equipment today and substituted solid state for the tubes, got rid of the pots and didn't use any uC's there wouldn't be some of the failures we see. But who wants to back to those instruments? Heck, I wouldn't even trade my new Keysight bench meter for the venerable 34401A.

Look at the past. VCR belts, tape decks, vacuum tubes. We dumped all that stuff because it was constantly in repair. I was a kid in the mid 60's working in a TV repair shop ( we had those things then!). In the late 60's we seemed to replace every selenium rectifier with silicon diodes, paper caps constantly leaked and DC would get to the grid of the next tube in the chain and tubes did go bad.... often!
Several years ago I was selling small digital tachometer kits. I must have sold hundreds with not one failure.
Software bugs are just what we have to accept for the great instruments we have today in my view. I wouldn't give up my uC's for a second!
Rob

[bsgd]

In brazil Keysight has a office (and a cal lab) in Barueri (Sao Paulo). I don't thing this is a third part.

Thats bad news, really bad. That's exactly the office I'm dealing with and I really expected them to be some 3rd party company which would certainly help me understand such a poor service. Not good. 

[Robaroni]

Oh wait! Some knuckleheads actually do want to go back to the past.... they call them audiophiles!

Rob

[GlowingGhoul]

Am I missing something here? Didn't this unit item fail outside of the warranty period?

It sucks that the fault wasn't found until the warranty expired, but an expiration date is just that. They sell extended warranties, and you chose to save a little money rather that buy insurance, but now that the risk failed to pay off you want Keysight to eat it? If they don't give you "bonus free extended warranty coverage" they are a bad company? That sounds like very entitled attitude.

[bsgd]

Am I missing something here? Didn't this unit item fail outside of the warranty period?

It sucks that the fault wasn't found until the warranty expired, but an expiration date is just that. They sell extended warranties, and you chose to save a little money rather that buy insurance, but now that the risk failed to pay off you want Keysight to eat it? If they don't give you "bonus free extended warranty coverage" they are a bad company? That sounds like very entitled attitude.

Yes it did. But I got a bad replacement unit from them right when the warranty was about to expire AND they wanna charge me more than 2.000 dollars to repair the defective unit they sent me when it had less than 10 hours of use. It just doesnt sound logical. I even expected to pay someting, but not 2k.

I never asked for a bonus extended warranty, please dont say things I have never said. Read the post.

[borjam]

In brazil Keysight has a office (and a cal lab) in Barueri (Sao Paulo). I don't thing this is a third part.

Thats bad news, really bad. That's exactly the office I'm dealing with and I really expected them to be some 3rd party company which would certainly help me understand such a poor service. Not good. 

Just wait and decide. Even if they use the name it can be a local company with an exclusive distribution agreement.

But given the reports of malfunctioning scopes it's clear that there's some isssue they must address. I remember the old bad capacitors issue, which was even worse for idle equipment, which was a real disaster for shops with back up equipment sitting idle. When the main equipment broke, they promptly replaced it with, sadly, non-functional backup units.

Apart from a good experience I had with Sony in 90's, recently I had an atrocious experience with a well known German manufacturer of aquarium equipment (Tunze). One of my movement pumps stopped working a month or two after the warranty expired. As I didn't have any electrical problems (I know, and I had two identical units, just one broke) they claimed that they wouldn't consider warranty service and that probably a snail had gotten stuck, blocking the pump. I had checked it thoroughly and there was no mechanical trouble. Besides, they proudly state that they have an effective electronic protection which, with a consumption of less than 20 W, is not exactly rocket science. So, in case a snail caused trouble, the protection didn't work at all.

In my case, the local office (a distributor) refused to do anything, and when I contacted the manufacturer directly, the answer was similar, followed by an angry message from the Spanish distributor. So I told them to dispose of the broken pump and of course the brand is in a proud position in my black list.

The local office is authorized to refer to themselves as Tunze Spain, and it's a distributor with an agreement. Although in this case the "mothership" was similarly unreliable.

[borjam]

Am I missing something here? Didn't this unit item fail outside of the warranty period?

It sucks that the fault wasn't found until the warranty expired, but an expiration date is just that. They sell extended warranties, and you chose to save a little money rather that buy insurance, but now that the risk failed to pay off you want Keysight to eat it? If they don't give you "bonus free extended warranty coverage" they are a bad company? That sounds like very entitled attitude.

There is a difference between an accident and something breaking because of a defect. A company that sticks to a warranty expiration to refuse covering a manufacturing defect is, in my book, dishonest. It can be legal,  but there are plenty of ways to be dishonest while complying with the law.

In my case with the aquarium pump, I was told that the failure was extremely rare. I have designed and sold products, and a report of a very rare failure would immediately compel me to try and find out what happened. You never know if you are facing a rare single part failure or a canary warning you of impending doom. And in the latter case I would prefer to know and be prepared. And if the fault was mine, I would prefer a satisfied customer. But
that's me of course.

[coppice]

Since they were basically defence companies at the time, they had to provide all the documentation and components needed for their customers to repair equipment in house, beyond the 90 days warranty.

No, they weren't. If you mean they sold a lot of equipment to the military, of course they did (although often it was special, rad-hardened versions of models), but this has nothing to do with providing documentation. I have a number of devices from the period (synthesizers, tape recorders, amplifiers, etc) from other companies that provided the exact same level of documentation.

When the cold war ended Tek and HP nearly collapsed. HP recovered, but Tek never really did. That is the extent to which they were defence focussed companies. If you supply to the actual military or their defence contractors you have to supply everything needed for in house support. Sure, a lot more consumer equipment had good documentation back then. A few companies, like Philips were extremely good for making both extensive documentation and specialist parts easily available. It was patchy though. For companies relying on defence sales there was no choice.

[marmad]

When the cold war ended Tek and HP nearly collapsed. HP recovered, but Tek never really did. That is the extent to which they were defence focussed companies.

Are you talking about the '90s now? You seem to be mixing different standards and time periods up. I don't know your background, but I lived and worked in L.A. during the late '70s and mid '80s - sometimes doing sub-contracted work for real defense companies like Lockheed - so again, no, HP and Tek were not "basically defence companies" in the '70s and '80s.

[GlowingGhoul]

Am I missing something here? Didn't this unit item fail outside of the warranty period?

It sucks that the fault wasn't found until the warranty expired, but an expiration date is just that. They sell extended warranties, and you chose to save a little money rather that buy insurance, but now that the risk failed to pay off you want Keysight to eat it? If they don't give you "bonus free extended warranty coverage" they are a bad company? That sounds like very entitled attitude.

There is a difference between an accident and something breaking because of a defect. A company that sticks to a warranty expiration to refuse covering a manufacturing defect is, in my book, dishonest. It can be legal,  but there are plenty of ways to be dishonest while complying with the law.

Warranties don't cover accidents, they cover manufacturing defects. Once the warranty period has ended why would a company be obligated to provide a replacement? This argument that it only had "ten hours of use" is irrelevant. The warranty period is a fixed period of time, not hours of use. You could buy a new unit, leave it on a shelf and never turn it on, and upon discovering it's defective after the warranty period expires is not the manufacturers responsibility.

You buy an extended warranty and hope you never need to use it. This argument that Keysight has somehow wronged the consumer here is childish.

[borjam]

Warranties don't cover accidents, they cover manufacturing defects. Once the warranty period has ended why would a company be obligated to provide a replacement?

As I said, I've seen several examples of companies covering for a manufacturing defect after the warranty had expired. That's what Sony did in the case I mention, for example. They had absolutely no legal requirement to do so. They opened the unit and, whoops, there was an obvious manufacturing defect, so they repaired it and they refused to charge.

And I'm talking about a manufacturing defect, not accidental damage of course. That's what thet said when they called. I did not expect it. That's not something you expect. But you can imagine that it had a strong positive effect on my trust as a customer.