Rohde & Schwarz FSEA 30

[kazam]

Don't rely too much on the manual (especially if you have an older version), R&S often introduced new features in subsequent software updates which also resulted in a new revision of manuals.

My memory is to dizzy when it comes to those old SAs but I'd get the last software update for your instrument and check the revision history, you might well find that SCPI over TCP/IP has been implemented later on.

I looked into this a bit more and it turns out it actually is supported through RSIB and a wrapper around the standard VXI interface running on the instrument itself:
https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_application/application_notes/1ef47/1EF47_2E.pdf

However, this seems a bit too much and I will likely just stay with GPIB since I have that working just fine with Keysight VISA I/O libraries and Matlab with instrument control toolbox.

[kazam]

OK, I have my unit opened up and getting ready to do the HDD upgrade.

Yes, it's definitely involved to get to the CPU board. It seems that it would just be able to slide out with the PSU but strangely enough there's a screw securing it to the main frame from the INSIDE of the CPU module. How did they even get this mounted.

I have a lot of options so the RF board rack is fully occupied. See picture.

Any tips on how to proceed from here? In what order should I continue disassembly?

Thanks!

[kazam]

Picture!

[Muxr]

Interesting, yours has additional electrolytic capacitors on the power supply side. Wonder if this was a factory bodge or someone did some extra work.

[kazam]

Yes, I noticed this. Looked a little strange to me as well.

This unit is really difficult to disassemble. Particularly mine which has the Ethernet and extra GPIB port option. Additional connectors that are hard to disconnect due to small lock nuts.

There really doesn't seem to be any way of removing the CPU board without fully removing the computer module from the chassis. How did they even get this together at the factory? Child workers with extremely long and thin arms?

Interesting, yours has additional electrolytic capacitors on the power supply side. Wonder if this was a factory bodge or someone did some extra work.

[Muxr]

Yes, I noticed this. Looked a little strange to me as well.

This unit is really difficult to disassemble. Particularly mine which has the Ethernet and extra GPIB port option. Additional connectors that are hard to disconnect due to small lock nuts.

There really doesn't seem to be any way of removing the CPU board without fully removing the computer module from the chassis. How did they even get this together at the factory? Child workers with extremely long and thin arms?

Interesting, yours has additional electrolytic capacitors on the power supply side. Wonder if this was a factory bodge or someone did some extra work.

The way I got to the PC board is following (should be similar for you):

- at the bottom I loosened the rail system screws and unlocked it with a flat head screwdriver.. this let me remove the last RF board (to give me some room), RF cables just unplug, I took a picture to remember how they connected.
- remove the PSU unit.. which sits on the back of the instrument top side. Yeah you're right these screws are a pain.
- you should now be seeing a metal shroud cover in the back of the instrument which protects the PC boards.. this shouldn't be too difficult to remove.

[kazam]

Yes, got it. Thanks.

Used a Transcend D330 32GB drive. My image file of the original drive compressed to ~235MB. Didn't bother with RAM upgrade, will order a new battery though.

In the end I opted to snip some plastic off the PSU connector in order to not have to loosen the innermost RF card. This worked fine.

Now I just have to get this thing together again!

The way I got to the PC board is following (should be similar for you):

- at the bottom I loosened the rail system screws and unlocked it with a flat head screwdriver.. this let me remove the last RF board (to give me some room), RF cables just unplug, I took a picture to remember how they connected.
- remove the PSU unit.. which sits on the back of the instrument top side. Yeah you're right these screws are a pain.
- you should now be seeing a metal shroud cover in the back of the instrument which protects the PC boards.. this shouldn't be too difficult to remove.

[kazam]

OK, so that's not working.

The BIOS complains that there is no boot disk available. I have tried restoring the image twice. The original drive read fine with ddrescue from Linux.

I'm starting to suspect that the BIOS won't acknowledge drives larger than 4GB or something equally stupid.  There's only one partition on the drive though and that's the original 2GB partition.

I don't need to set a boot flag in the MBR or something to that effect? It's been awhile since I did anything with IDE.

[CJay]

If the BIOS can see the drive then it should boot as long as the image is good but is your imaging software 'resizing' a DOS partition to something larger than DOS can see?

Is it possible to boot the analyser with a USB stick, DOS floppy or optical media so you can check that you can partition and format the SSD 'in situ'?

[Muxr]

OK, so that's not working.

The BIOS complains that there is no boot disk available. I have tried restoring the image twice. The original drive read fine with ddrescue from Linux.

I'm starting to suspect that the BIOS won't acknowledge drives larger than 4GB or something equally stupid.  There's only one partition on the drive though and that's the original 2GB partition.

I don't need to set a boot flag in the MBR or something to that effect? It's been awhile since I did anything with IDE.

Make sure your ddrescue backed up the entire device and not just one partition from it. Your situation is probably different (different version of software and OS), but my original disk had two equally sized partitions, and one small one.

[kazam]

Yes, I did backup the entire device.

I did some reading and it turns out certain BIOS implementations simply can't deal with drives larger than 8GB. So now I'm trying to find a way to reduce the actual disk size as reported to the BIOS.

[kazam]

HDAT2 could possibly be the solution here.

We're you able to get into the BIOS? I'm thinking of getting a keyboard to have a look around.

[Muxr]

I have not tried accessing the BIOS, sorry.

[pjm]

Hi Chaps,

Thanks for the suggestion on the HDD replacement. I have an FSIQ3 which is virtually the same internally as the FSEA30 and the HDD which was an old Fujitsu 4.7G thing, was starting to make noises similar to the click of death. Anyway, I have DD'd the image and copied it to an 8Gb UDMA7 transcend flash, system boots quickly and seems very responsive.

I've also added a LAN card, its a 16 bit ISA 10base2 / 10baseT (INTEL PRO/10 S82595 COMBO 10 Mb RJ45 BNC ISA) which NT4 supports. No issues with compatibility and chats on the network nicely - Windows 7 clients have to have a simple mod to allow them to get to the disk shares. Also installed VNC service on the O/S to allow easy remote management, all very good so far.

The analyser certainly is excellent and I can say that its performance is comparable with units many times the price. I've tested the phase noise measurement and the noise figure measurement and both work fine.

Regards,

Paul
@uhf_satcom

[technogeeky]

Wow. On the plus side, if that instrument ever dies beyond repair that thing is chock full of (probably) very nice cables. Short, but I bet they are very nice.

Beautiful instrument.

[Bicurico]

Hi,

I am going to receive such a unit to try to repair it. It boots with error on STEST ABORTED ERROR ON RF MODUL RF CONVERTER Error 18.

Any idea, apart from usual cleaning?
Looking for manuals and repair info.
Will keep you updated.


Regards,
Vitor

[MindBender]

It's a factory bodge; My FSIQ3 has it too.

[MindBender]

Yes, I did backup the entire device.

I did some reading and it turns out certain BIOS implementations simply can't deal with drives larger than 8GB. So now I'm trying to find a way to reduce the actual disk size as reported to the BIOS.

I'm sorry to dig up such an old thread, but I guess it's justified because the instrument isn't that young anymore either, and my problem is very similar to yours.

It is also possible that your CF card is not supported because it only reports it's size in LBAs, and not in the older CHS (Cylinders/Heads/Sectors). Many CF cards don't do this, because it is not mandatory for the CompactFlash standard. If the BIOS doesn't support LBA, it requires CHS, and hence the machine won't boot.

I too own an FSIQ3 with most of the HW options installed. I got it 6 years ago, and haven't used it very much, unfortunately. When I got it, I did upgraded the RAM: I got it to work with 2 SO-DIMMs of 512MiB each SDR133 RAM. I don't think 1GB PC133 SO-DIMMs were ever made, or are incredibly rare, expensive and unlikely to be supported.

My battery went dead, and because I'm a stickler, I wanted to replace it. Anybody knows how long it will last? Because it's a real journey to get to the battery. I ordered a new one. Tip: If you want one with the leads on it, order an LS14250CNA.

I did not update the HDD when I got the unit, but I'm not waiting until the old Fujitsu MHK2060AT is breaking down. So now it's open, I'm replacing it with a Transcend TS8GPSD520 8GB SLC drive. It's industrial grade, according to Transcend. I hope it really is. I'm not concerned with speed. I'm more concerned with reliability: I have seen NAND flash memory fail in many devices. SLC is a good sign though. I hope my BIOS supports the drive.

After I have DD'ed my original drive to the new and bigger Transcend drive: Does anybody know if I can safely resize the partition so it will also span the extra size of the new drive?

[MindBender]

Used a Transcend D330 32GB drive. My image file of the original drive compressed to ~235MB. Didn't bother with RAM upgrade, will order a new battery though.

Did you get it to work with that Transcend drive? I have tried both the 2GB TS2GPSD520 and the 4GB TS4GPSD520. When booting the instrument into MS-DOS 6.22 by floppy, it doesn't even recognise having a hard disk. I didn't try a CF adapter with this instrument.

These Transcend drives didn't work in my R&S UPL either. They were recognised, but fdisk failed. The BIOS (latest version) mis-identified them, but even with manual geometry configuration, fdisk failed. When dumping the disk contents after fdisk failure, all odd bytes had a value of 0xFF and the even bytes didn't make much sense. None of the many CF cards I have tried worked either. All the exact same failure mode. Really frustrating.

Can anybody confirm what drive/CF-card you have and whether that works with this instrument?

[Converter]

Hello everyone,
Who can answer me? This green LED "SUPPLY-CHECK", which is located at the back of the device (FSIQ3) near the power connector, should glow? Or is it a sign of a malfunction? I checked all the voltages: +12, +15, -15, +5.2, +5.5, +28. It seems that they are all in the normal range. Nevertheless, I get this glowing LED "SUPPLY-CHECK" immediately after the start of the spectrum analyzer.

Nobody has an electric schematic for this power unit? It's strange, but I did not see any tuning resistors inside for any adjustments.

[sky2city]

Hi PAL,
Is there anybody know how to clone the disk of ZVR?
as I know, ZVR have the same CPU card as FSEA.
The HDD of my ZVR is dying and I have to backup and clone it to another HDD.
I had tried "Selfimage" tool running on winXP and "ddrescue" tool running on Ubuntu, without lucky, both is fail. 
it error said "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

So it there anybody have clone the HDD sucessful? and it is so much thanks to whom, tell me the exactly step?
thanks advance.

Roger

[Muxr]

ddrescue should work.. make sure you're backing up the entire disk, not just one partition. If you're just restoring one partition then the MBR (master boot record) won't be written and your target drive won't be able to boot.

There are also ways to rebuild MBR but I would rather just backup and restore the whole drive with ddrescue.

Can you list your ddrescue commands you used?

Actually, nevermind, saw it in your screenshot.

Try "parted -l" to check the partition table.. and see if the boot flag is present.

[sky2city]

Hi Muxr,
thanks for your reply.
pls. refer the pic attached, I am sure I had cloned the whold disk, given the size of ZVR HDD is 4871Mbytes.
about ddrescue command line, I just used one command, it is
"sudo ddrescue -f -v /dev/sdb /dev/sdc";
/dev/sdb is the orignal HDD from ZVR, and sdc is the new CF card, with CF to IDE transfer card.

about the boot flag, I can mount the CF card on my IBM labtop and boot it, I saw the OS loader screen, select the winNT or winNT with VGA mode. so I thinks the  boot flag is corrective.

Anyway, I will double check it again.

thanks for your reply again.

Roger.

[sky2city]

Must I format the CF card firstly before I clone it?

Or maybe the BIOS of ZVR can't recognize the CF card?

So, I want to enter the BIOS to see, if the BIOS have found the new CF card disk already.
I have a key board and mouse install in ZVR, when I pressed DEL or F2 when booting, nothing happen. I think maybe that a AWRD BIOS that customized by R&S. 

any idea / advice for the next step?

Roger.

[DaJMasta]

Definitely could be, I know I've had some trouble with compact flash cards in adapters not being identified by older systems.  If Delete doesn't work, try basically any of the function keys.... there are a few keys it could be, so I usually just end up jamming as many as I can in that initial window.