Products > Test Equipment
PXI PXIe RF Gear - Agilent / Keysight vs NI
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ZL1CVD:
The PXIe-8106 controller in E6621A can be upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit. I upgraded memory to 4GB and added a Chinese 128GB IDE SSD. It actually runs quite well. Things to note:

- NI do not have a driver packet for the controller as they stopped support at XP.

- Windows 7 has almost everything as standard.

- Suggest you install all Windows updates before you start installing NI stuff.

- The under $10 Windows 7 Ultimate CD Key and ISO download on eBay really does work well. I purchased item 153036208790 and was instantly delivered the CD Key and download details for both 32 & 64-bit ISO's. also a handy PDF instruction sheet. Windows registered flawlessly & updated fine.

- You need to locate Windows 7 8110 WDT driver on the NI site - have a good hunt, I found it on one of their forums.

- NI4882 needs version 15.5 GPIB drivers. NI does not have these on their site anymore. I contacted NI support who was extremely helpful and eventually provided a link to the file.

- Try not to install anything Agilent or Keysight on it. If you really must, research 1st and create a restore point and backup. The Keysight installers are hopeless - several failed midway on me. I think they expect to be loaded on Agilent controller.

NI have been exceptionally helpful. I actually receive email from them wanting to know how I got on after providing the driver I wanted and suggesting other things to look in to. Sure they are drumming up business but very professional and good to see. Well recommended...
coromonadalix:
Damn  thats a lot of signal "pipes"   i recall the old windows screen saver  pipes  loll

Nice to see an good support from NI
tmbinc:
I have an E6621A as well. I looked into the E6651A but i figured out that it was based on the older aeroflex modules (PXI and don't work in PXI/PXIe hybrid slots).

One of the SST6.0  on mine is broken (doesn't detect the DSP if i remember correctly) so I hacked the firmware to behave as a single baseband unit.

It would be interesting to interface with the ADU/DAUs as technically they have everything you need for a 100 MHz AWG/VSA. Ideally I would just love to send over the stream over the ethernet ports. I started writing custom code to interface their DLLs but at some point ran out of time :/
KD1RX:
Just curious if anyone's cracked an E6651A yet.  I just picked up the 3 GHz version of the E6621A and can confirm that it still has the PXI-5652 6.6 GHz generators in it.  I was sure it was going to come with 5651s, but was happily proven wrong.  Given that it's perfectly functional, it seems borderline criminal to part it out.
KD1RX:
Just in case anyone's interested, I took the backplane and power supply from the E6621A and stuffed them into an old PXI-1045 chassis and everything fit.  The only caveat is that the 1065 expects a momentary push-button switch and the 1045 has an on-off push switch.  My caveman solution is to just do a quick of-on-off double-tap to turn the system on.  I can't remember now, but there may have been a little bit of pin swizzling that I had to do too, the backplane datasheets are your friend here.
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