Products > Test Equipment
Rigol DS1000Z series buglist continued (latest: 00.04.04.04.03, 2019-05-30)
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BravoV:

--- Quote from: technogeeky on May 15, 2017, 02:50:59 am ---Can anyone else here come up with business arguments that would make this move a clear win? Is there something I'm missing, where they will be throwing away something that Rigol considers critical?

--- End quote ---

Few that I could think of with the current opened firmware mechanism and current cost sensitive design :

1. Support cost , bricked or damaged scope caused by noob or mistake in using a custom modified firmware.

2. Related to point no.1 , the possibility of rejections or disgruntled distributors as handling product return/replacement caused by bricked modded firmware is considered a money loosing business deal for low margin product. This will hurt business relations.

2. Reputation cost, imagine a high profiled internet celebrities, but a noob that bricked the scope by mistake, and shouting out loud at the internet damaging their reputation, the cost to recover from that isn't something easily to cope with, especially with this low margin product, and also damaging effect for their overall brand's reputation.

3. Control, what this means is, they want to be "in control" on what they produced and sold, even its shitty. As there is NO GUARANTEE that opened model and publicly modded firmware will be always better.

4. Sum up all above points 1 to 3, they are big company, pretty sure the risk & gain from their business perspective, this will be not a top priority, and imo they must have something "else" better to do.


Few notes especially to point 1 if they really want to pursue this road, I think its mandatory that they need to put a clearly stated EULA, like putting on the boot screen, that a custom modded firmware will void the scope warranty. Also not sure if this is even legal at all countries ?

Also put some protection mechanism that is not easily to tamper, in order to detect if modded firmware was loaded even once, hence its easy to reject warranty claim. Not sure if this will increase the cost.  :-//
boggis the cat:
You could make a software check / dump part of the support / RMA process.  'Put this on USB drive, insert in product, record information on display' type deal.  If the check fails to work, then a dump of critical software could be done to determine if the problem was due to 'official' software or not.  (Posting a process to 'un-brick' the 'scope for those who do manage to do so shouldn't be too hard.  It shouldn't be possible to physically damage a 'scope via firmware -- so far as I am aware.)

If you choose to modify something then you lose warranty, unless you stick to 'sanctioned' modifications such as updates from the manufacturer.  The manufacturer could choose to use better code that is released, or just stay with a buggy 'official' version and let customers decide whether they want to tinker or not.
Karel:
Thank you for confirming my findings related to this "new" bug. I thought it was me getting crazy...

I reported it to Rigol and I'll let you know when they respond and if they confirm the bug.

Fortunately it's not an important bug and it's possible to workaround it.
Despite that, it should be added to the buglist...
Karel:

--- Quote from: technogeeky on May 15, 2017, 02:50:59 am ---All of the features of the Keysight could easily be added to the 1054z.

--- End quote ---

I believe you make the wrong assumption that the internal system (FPGA/CPU/memory) of the scope allows for that.

It's my impression that one of the reasons for the "shitty" firmware is that there's not enough space (memory/cpu-power) to implement all the features in the correct way.
They are strugling with it. Probably, the only way to improve the firmware is to throw out half of the features...

For example, the big blunder with the USB max packetsize (64 bytes instead of 512), they can't solve it because changing the
usb stack from using 64 byte buffers to 512 byte buffers requires more memory.

BravoV:

--- Quote from: boggis the cat on May 15, 2017, 07:47:01 am ---You could make a software check / dump part of the support / RMA process.  'Put this on USB drive, insert in product, record information on display' type deal.  If the check fails to work, then a dump of critical software could be done to determine if the problem was due to 'official' software or not. 
--- End quote ---

"What if" .. the modded firmware is so bad that put the scope into infinite loop once booted ?

Assuming they released "all" including the boot code, and the user screwed the initialization code so bad that made the scope just sit there doing nothing in the deadly infinite loop.

When its time to RMA, and as usual, "few" users  >:D will be pretending innocent, and as expected, the fight dispute between seller and user on RMA ... and so on, you just need a little imagination to think of the next scenes. 



--- Quote from: boggis the cat on May 15, 2017, 07:47:01 am ---(Posting a process to 'un-brick' the 'scope for those who do manage to do so shouldn't be too hard. 
--- End quote ---

"What if" .. the un-brick process only can be done if the initialization code also is not modded, and alas, because of the low cost constraints, design wise, protecting the init code is not possible.  :-//



--- Quote from: boggis the cat on May 15, 2017, 07:47:01 am ---It shouldn't be possible to physically damage a 'scope via firmware -- so far as I am aware.)
--- End quote ---

"What if" ... the modded firmware is so shitty, forgot to switch the front end relay to switch to less sensitive input level, while the screen is prompting its ok to plug and pump in high voltage signal ?   :palm:

... another "what if" ... the over temperature mechanism is triggered, and the part of the firmware that supposed for handling the shutdown sequences is ignored or buggy ...   >:D

Too many "what ifs" ... and back to my previous post, its never about these "what ifs" scenarios anyway, the "fact" is, these scopes are selling like hot cakes, so why bother ?  :-//



Rather than sink deep in this fuss and mess, why not focus and concentrate on designing and making another new generation low cost scope, sort of DS1054Z successor, as DS1054Z is considered quite old now, and the new beast is specifically targeted to hit very hard to those new competing products.  >:D
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