Products > Test Equipment

please dont purchase PC controlled test equipment

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MK14:

--- Quote from: oz2cpu on March 02, 2023, 12:39:53 pm ---Headline : please don't purchase PC controlled test equipment
I mean of course ONLY controllable by pc

--- End quote ---

So what about the Analog Discovery and Analog Discovery 2?

2N3055:

--- Quote from: nctnico on March 02, 2023, 10:01:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: 2N3055 on March 02, 2023, 09:21:34 pm ---There are many examples where people changed a PC motherboard on and old scope with new different one to repair and/or upgrade... They could do that because scope was in fact a windows PC.
Picoscope supports 15-20 years old hardware with software that is still active...

--- End quote ---
Picoscope is a rare exception. And changing a motherboard in an old scope is much harder than you'd think as the OS needs to support the newer hardware as well. Lot's of older scopes run Win2k or maybe Windows XP. Windows 95/98 is not out of the question either. Try to add support for USB to such old hardware. Been there, done that a few times already.


--- Quote ---You can get old PCs cheap.

--- End quote ---
But really old PCs (like the ones with 486 processors and ISA slots that can run Windows 3.11 / Windows 95) are getting expensive. Recently I got rid of a whole bunch of such PCs and a guy drove over 200km to pick them up.

--- End quote ---

All you said is right but you missed the point. It is easier to find a replacement PC board (or PC) than really single purpose custom PCB for a single oscilloscope product. I.E. it is easier to find a replacement PC and ALL needed software than some custom PCB and special software for an instrument.
And most of the time you don't need it to be exactly the same, but close enough...

My old Pico 212-100 needs 32 bit Windows 7 and a software that is downloadable from Picotech.
It is more than 20 years old. Still works.
That means a bit older PC but those are still around. I actually have a laptop for it that was given to me for free..

But if we ignore Picoscope, truth is that you need to dedicate a PC for your T&M equipment. I have few Picos, Digital Discovery, a SignalHound SA, few USB logic analysers.. And have one PC and touchscreen monitor at my workstation for them. Which also comes in handy to open datasheets, BOM (very nice interactive BOM in Kicad for instance). I also run automation scripts on it , in addition to a Raspbery PI (for longer running stuff)...

Like I said, PC based instruments are different, so your business continuity is different. For instance, I can easily buy another PC (or cheap PC parts), any monitor, and make an image of disk, a backup.
If an LCD on my Keysight scope dies, what are my options here?

It is simply different sets of problems and solutions.


james_s:

--- Quote from: TomKatt on March 02, 2023, 01:38:34 pm ---I wish there was a good answer to that dilemma, because it goes beyond just test equipment.  In our shop we've had to replace CNC equipment that hardware wise is still operational, but if the pc based controller fails the cost of repair is so close to an entire new machine it doesn't make sense to invest repairing it.  Recently an automated panel saw with a controller based on Microsoft's embedded "mobile" platform failed and when we located one of what appears to be the last 3 controllers left on earth the price was stupid expensive. 

--- End quote ---

Did you take a look inside it? Earlier this week I fixed a controller for a ~$80k CNC machine. It turned out it was an industrial PC motherboard, the sort where the whole computer is on a card that plugs into a backplane, Pentium4 that runs Windows XP embedded. The machine company wanted $1k to look at it and estimated $10k-$12k to repair it. I fixed it in a day for under $50 by replacing a whole pile of bulging electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard.

oz2cpu:
>>I'll assume you got it very cheap?

sure .. i get trash for free,
no one will be silly enough to pay anything for this set..
maybe 5 $ for the case ? since they can quite easy be re used

TomKatt:

--- Quote from: james_s on March 03, 2023, 08:36:59 am ---Did you take a look inside it? Earlier this week I fixed a controller for a ~$80k CNC machine. It turned out it was an industrial PC motherboard, the sort where the whole computer is on a card that plugs into a backplane, Pentium4 that runs Windows XP embedded. The machine company wanted $1k to look at it and estimated $10k-$12k to repair it. I fixed it in a day for under $50 by replacing a whole pile of bulging electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard.

--- End quote ---
Yes, we did.  While we also have equipment using industrial pc hardware like you describe, this unit was some oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.  We even sent it out to a repair shop that claimed they could repair it (they have done many other repairs for us) and they couldn't resolve it either.  I'm sure from a technical pov it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with some generic pc system as the actual IO is run by PLC's in the cabinet, but apparently the manufacturer did not have any generic software that would interface with the PLC system as that software was all in the ROM.  So their solution was $40K+ to replace everything when the saw went for around $60K on the used market.

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