Teardown, Repair & Upgrade of an Agilent E4405B 13.5GHz ESA-E Spectrum Analyzer

[Hugoneus]

You can watch the video here: [39 Minutes]
youtu.be/3R0txBEIvjQ

More videos at The Signal Path:
http://www.TheSignalPath.com

[HighVoltage]

Another nice repair video from you, thank you.
Thank you for teaching us!

I am not sure if I like your modification to LEDs for the LCD light or may be it is just the camera that does not show it correctly.
It just does not look evenly bright.

A few back light repairs I did, had better results, when I stayed with replacement tubes instead of LEDs


 

[Hugoneus]

Another nice repair video from you, thank you.
Thank you for teaching us!

I am not sure if I like your modification to LEDs for the LCD light or may be it is just the camera that does not show it correctly.
It just does not look evenly bright.

A few back light repairs I did, had better results, when I stayed with replacement tubes instead of LEDs

It is actually pretty bright in person. The camera was on auto gain and it was hard to tell the result from that.

[bjcuizon]

Thanks for another great video Shahriar, I enjoyed it all throughout.
What video no. is the repair for the other model? I cant seem to find it.

EDIT: Doohh, I already found it. Thanks.

[suj]

Thank you Shahriar  . I was looking for a spectrum analyzer that supports harmonic mixers. I found E4407B with AYZ option that someone wanted to sell with the "LO unlock" error. Three hours with youtube  and your two episodes about ESA-E and I was sure I could do it. I have other spectrum analyzers, 85024A probe, generators, VNA etc but I have not bought broken measuring equipment before.
The same day when I ordered this E4407B, I also ordered CLIP manual for ESA-E and HMMC-3124/1GC1-4207 :4 frequency divider (I found in China).
The first came E4407B. In my case, the divider lost its signal if the LO frequency was greater than 6 GHz. I also had to replace the M4T28B Timekeeper battery and the volume knob were missing. I found the battery and the gray knob locally. Today a parcel with a divider chip arrived. A large hot air blower was needed because the hot air from my soldering station could not warm up enough. The effect is easy to predict. The next ESA-E had :4 damaged divider and has been repaired (+1 for statistics). My new chip is not signed with the Agilent name (probably Avago production) and I hope it will live a little.
Shahriar, you are the man! 

[analogRF]

Hi
I was wondering if anyone hacked these ESA spectrum analyzers to enable options?

some options like 1DR and 1DS (or even 1D5 for S/N > 4421) can be enabled by license key only

https://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=277453&nid=-11143.0.00&id=277453

[hartvige]

suj: Where did you order the CLIP manuals for E4407B from? Is this ArtekManuals? Their web site only lists a E4400-90310 document, which they claim cover E4401/2/3/4, but not E4407B. I would be happy to order from them, but would like to make sure it actually covers E4407B before doing so