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Reverse engineering Tektronix TDS3GV module for TDS3000 series oscilloscopes?

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Icchan:
Hi everyone.

I've had a possession of older Tektronix TDS3032 oscilloscope for some years. It's good unit, but the lack of any expansion cards is starting to drive me crazy. I have a floppy drive (which I'm thinking to replace with floppy emulator), but RS232/VGA/GPIB option card would be a god send.

Unfortunately TDS3GV module is prohibitively expensive. It's hundreds of Euros used, and with that mount of money, one should already buy new Rigol or something else and that would be money better spent.

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/oscilloscope-modules/4136989/

I spent some time Googling if anyone has reverse engineered or even opened the module and if it's in any way feasible as a project to create OSH replacement for this. But found nothing.

I wonder if any forum members have aforementioned module that they could open up and photograph at least? that would at least give some idea if there's any sense even considering the idea.

Thanks for any input about this :)

Jwalling:
Here you go.

james_s:
This is a very old thread but I just found it today. Fascinating, there's very little in those, it can almost be reverse engineered just from a photo. The VGA is as I suspected just a DAC which is almost certainly fed by the same signals that go to the internal LCD. The RS232 looks like just some buffers and a level shifter. The GPIB uses an off the shelf GPIB interface IC.

Just having the pinout for the RS232 portion would make it easy to replicate that part which is all I really need.

pmercier:
Hi,

can't agree more with you jame_s. I have two of the TDS3000 at home and started to wan't at least a serial interface.

I started to map the connector pinout around april and can confirm that the LCD lines are more or less directly connected to it.

The serial lines seem to be around the middle of the connector but hadn't time to confirm it.

james_s:
Well I ended up just buying one of these things myself, at $240 it was more than I had invested in the whole scope but I'm still ahead in the grand scheme of things. Time permitting I'll reverse engineer the serial portion, that alone is enough to do the bandwidth unlock amongst other things.

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