Products > Test Equipment
Sniffing the Rigol's internal I2C bus
Purevector:
--- Quote from: marmad on June 21, 2014, 04:03:15 pm ---Strange. Then I imagine it might just be a side-effect of the way the keys are generated in lots for the 2000A series. I doubt very much that it's anything specifically intentional by Rigol since, AFAIK, they don't even sell BW upgrades - so if they were going to try to quash illicit BW upgrades, why not all of them?
If it's FW checking a new hardware revision of the board, then they had to code it quite some time ago into the FW since we've been on FW v.2 since last December or January.
--- End quote ---
Depending on Rigol's business plan, blocking 300MHz may be a smart marketing move. I am sure sales of Rigol scopes is greatly enhanced by their reputation of being hackable. If they clamped down hard on that, I think may people would look elsewhere for budget scopes. For most people 200MHz and all options is a great hack. I know I am very happy with what I have. However, if you are a person who knows they need 300MHz, then you're probably not simply a hobbyist or low-budget lab. In that performance range, you probably have a budget, and Rigol would want a bite of that. This way, they still retain the budget crowd, while cashing in on the higher end user. Also, as I said before, maybe during testing they flag units that are not capable of 300MHz. This is all conjecture as I am in no way affiliated with Rigol.
If there is some sort of bug with the cryptography, I would be happy to provide any help I can to try and fix it.
marmad:
--- Quote from: Purevector on June 21, 2014, 04:23:58 pm ---Depending on Rigol's business plan, blocking 300MHz may be a smart marketing move. I am sure sales of Rigol scopes is greatly enhanced by their reputation of being hackable. If they clamped down hard on that, I think may people would look elsewhere for budget scopes. For most people 200MHz and all options is a great hack. I know I am very happy with what I have. However, if you are a person who knows they need 300MHz, then you're probably not simply a hobbyist or low-budget lab. In that performance range, you probably have a budget, and Rigol would want a bite of that. This way, they still retain the budget crowd, while cashing in on the higher end user. Also, as I said before, maybe during testing they flag units that are not capable of 300MHz. This is all conjecture as I am in no way affiliated with Rigol.
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You have a point - but honestly, the DS2000 series would not be a great choice if you really need the full 300MHz while using both channels. As many have pointed out here before, trying to squeeze 300MHz out of a machine with only a 1GSa/s maximum sample rate (both channels on) is really pushing the bounds of the input filter and sin(x) interpolation.
rmawatson:
Hello,
So I've just spent best part of £700 on a Rigol 2072A in the hope of being able to unlock it to 300mhz. Is there any way I can know if my unit is locked to 200mhz or will allow the full 300mhz. Is this defined by hardware, or is this something implemented in new firmware revisions ?
Sorry if this is answered, I haven't read all of the last 200 pages of posts.
Cheers
Rob.
marmad:
--- Quote from: rmawatson on June 21, 2014, 04:35:53 pm ---So I've just spent best part of £700 on a Rigol 2072A in the hope of being able to unlock it to 300mhz. Is there any way I can know if my unit is locked to 200mhz or will allow the full 300mhz. Is this defined by hardware, or is this something implemented in new firmware revisions ?
--- End quote ---
It's unclear at this time whether it's FW/key related - or related to a new HW revision. Some new owners seem to be able to install the 300MHz option - while others can't.
rmawatson:
Ok, well with luck it will turn up early next week. I'll report on here how it turns out with my scope and any version details I can to help others.
I was however wondering... Is it possible, like with flash/hard drives, that they units are tested prior to being labeled, and perhaps there is variation in the quality of the analog front ends of these scopes. Some work up to 300mhz within some set parameters, others don't perform to the same quality threshold, and they are catagorised as such?
This would make sense when looking at the cost of these scopes. As with most things, making it with tolerance is cheaper, especially if you can rebrand lower quality items as a lower end in the same product range.
This is from a point of view or ignorance on the internals of these scopes, so I have no idea if there are components that have this kind of band of quality, or if its a case of it they work at 300mhz as designed, or not at all?
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