Tek CSA7404/TDS7000 repair project (Upgraded memory/CPU)

[charlyd]

the problem is fixed with all FF FF FF to the fram or nvram,  that way i forced the nvram or eq.  into a re-init of the scope
But the most important info i can tell for sure now is that. if your nvram content is not what it should be. also combined with no .sn and .key the SPC will fail....keep that in mind.

next to fix is the
TCA-1MEG and P7260 and P7380

[editted:  opened a new topic for this one]

[charlyd]

i have installed WINXP on a 7404 and playing around  i discovered that when i add  options ST and SM  which give you a lot more trigger options i do not get the bottom options added like in the picture.
can this be because of WINXP installed  and the software is just WIN2000 compatible.

i am wandering if somebody with WINXP installed on his 7404 culd do a test.   and add  a options key like  08 44 XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX ... [where the 08 stand for 4M ) and the double 4 like  "44"  stand for both  ST(4 on the left)  and SM ( 4 on the right).

it is easy to do create a key ( i can help you if you don t know how it works) add the extra options in your scope reboot at least 1 time and see if these option appear.

i added pictures from a working enviroment but are they also added on a WINXP installed scope?

how can i do this quick test on this WINXP installed 7404 scope? and see if they appear and disappear when changing the "00" -> "44" -> "00" in the key

[DebboR]

Hi!

I have a TDS7404 where the front LCD remains completely white when booted (it worked fine a few months ago, but after sitting for a while and trying it now it doesn't show anything anymore). It does still seem to boot successfully though, and I get a display output over the PPC VGA port.
On the NLX VGA port, I also just get a white display output.

I can boot into Windows 2000 fine when I enable VGA mode in the F8 menu.
Also, I've taken it apart and notice on the 7-segment display that the PPC board boots fine too (blinking "-" symbol).

I've read that in the BIOS you need to enable PCI video output, but that option does not seem to exist in my BIOS.
Any pointers as to what I can try? I have a floppy drive and some disk on order too.

Thanks!

[charlyd]

@DebboR   what does your debug console output say?  please post your log here.

[doc1973]

To all of you who have been so dedicated to keeping this topic going:
I only recently found this by tripping over it in another search I was doing for work stuff, and joined in the fun. My eyes are now falling out of my head, but the information available here seems to be more thorough that anything Tek ever published - so great job. I own a 5054B-NV-AV, and honestly it does most everything I require of it, and it's been a solid scope for some time now, however having read so many bad stories about it I thought I may be better off at least getting a clone of the HDD before it dies.
That led down a trail of frustrations - no matter what I tried I could not get it to boot from either USB or 'DVD' Rom drive - and I have a fair amount of experience with older PC gear! So here's the skinny on what I've found that I hope helps somebody along their path:
1) The Mobo's in these older units are from a time when PC hardware was changing very rapidly, so they can and will be stubborn about things, and booting is no stranger in this department.
2) There may be several mildly different variants of the same general design, so don't assume yours will behave the same as another's.
3) Booting from CD Filesystems (and USB for that matter) will be fraught with issues, especially if it's a borrowed version or a roll-your-own version.
    (Intel even published the fact that there was a pathway to problems in this area..)
4) Persistence will pay off. In my case I discovered that the 'DVD Rom' drive was very particular about what type of disk was used - only the oldest ones I still had on hand would work - and they were dated back to 2005-ish.
5) Pay attention to the boot process - the only discs I was able to boot had EFI boot sectors, some of the linux hybrids will probably boot, but not all - and it's likely you'd be hard pressed to get anything newer than 2010 to boot in OEM hardware.
6) You can boot these into a live linux setting which opens up a lot of possibilities. (see pic)

I have a nice MDO super-duper scope in the lab at work, but my favorite and the one that stays on my bench (mostly because it's too heavy to walk away with) is the DPO7104.
It is old and cranky (not too unlike myself) and that's fine - perhaps someday I'll buy it at auction - if I ever decide to carry it down the hall.

Thank you to all of you - and keep up the good work!

PS.. the image attached below is for your viewing pleasure - the TDS5054B running crunchbang linux (which was what finally allowed me to image that hard disk).

[DebboR]

Tried swapping the NLX board, no fix.

After this, I took apart the display assembly and re-seated the connectors, which fixed the issue! Definitely worth a try if somebody is experiencing similar issues.
No clue why this happened, the scope was sitting on my desk and hadn't been touched since the last time I powered it off fine.

@charlyd The PPC board booted fine (from the 7-seg display), so I didn't grab any logs, but thanks for the help!

[exit_failure]

I somehow can't seem to figure out how to generate a proper option key.

I did a fresh install of the scope with Windows XP. I just installed the Scope software und the required drivers. I did not copy any sn or key files from the old installation. It seemed to configure every thing correctly on its own.

The serial number (B031754) on the back of the scope matches with that in the about menu and the 2M option, that came with the scope was recognized automatically. Here, the option key on the back matches the one in the about menu as well.

I tried generating a key for the 3M option key like this:

Code: [Select]

python gen.py tds7104 B031754 04
I get this:

Code: [Select]

PF9D3-M6GHM-JTF8F-5
which obviously is not a proper option key. If I enter it into the option installation masks of the scopes software it also tell me that.

Could somebody maybe tell what exactly the parameters of the key generator program have to be? What exactly is the option mask supposed to be?

As a sanity check: If I enter the currently installed option key that came with the scope into the validate function, it shows me the correct serial number.

[exit_failure]

I somehow can't seem to figure out how to generate a proper option key.

I did a fresh install of the scope with Windows XP. I just installed the Scope software und the required drivers. I did not copy any sn or key files from the old installation. It seemed to configure every thing correctly on its own.

The serial number (B031754) on the back of the scope matches with that in the about menu and the 2M option, that came with the scope was recognized automatically. Here, the option key on the back matches the one in the about menu as well.

I tried generating a key for the 3M option key like this:Code: [Select]python gen.py tds7104 B031754 04
I get this:Code: [Select]PF9D3-M6GHM-JTF8F-5
which obviously is not a proper option key. If I enter it into the option installation masks of the scopes software it also tell me that.

Could somebody maybe tell what exactly the parameters of the key generator program have to be? What exactly is the option mask supposed to be?

As a sanity check: If I enter the currently installed option key that came with the scope into the validate function, it shows me the correct serial number.

I was able to answer my own question:
The option mask has to have a fixed length. That means that the trailing digits have to filled with zeros. If you just wanted the 3M option, the corresponding option mask would be:

Code: [Select]

040000000000000000000000000000000000I fiddled around with the masks given in the program but didn't know how to enable exactly the options I wanted. This is why I ended up with this mask:

Code: [Select]

04FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
This seems to enable all possible software option and 3M. If all you see are the memory depth and SM options and apart from that only "App XX Avail: not installed" you have to install the appropriate software packages
 from the Tektronix website and reboot the scope. After that the options will show up.

Nevertheless, there will still be a lot of options that are marked as "not installed" since they don't exist for the scope. If anybody knows how to do this properly, any information would be very welcome.

[charlyd]

hi when you are looking for the options ST and SM here they are:  (later i saw i already type it above  )

00 44 00 00 00 0..................

  ST is the left "4" and SM is the right "4".

where in your long string:
first 04  = 2M and 08 = 4M (max for non b-versions)

hope this helps for you ;-)

[charlyd]

yesterday i opened a new topic on getting the content of a Eeprom from the TDS7404.

Who can help me out with an export his TDS7404 Eeprom  location U1052 
there are many boards with broken trigger chips circulating arround , i guess those content should be ok too.  who wants to upload a TDS7404 ACQ CAL MEM U1052  - X28165

to help others always export your Eeprom before running the following command.
because as far as i see it was emptied and drops error 521 in the diagnostics after i ran the CalConStatus = cc_init(1)

Code: [Select]

Done executing startup script c:/vxboot/topscript.hw
KERNEL:  RUNNING TIME SLICED AT 10 TICKS PER SLICE!
-> calConStatus = cc_init(1)
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: extended bank4 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): Storing 300 bytes of service cal data from 0x15fb200 into EEPROM[0].
0x16301e0 (tShell): EEPROM service cal data verified.
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: extended bank17 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): Storing 82 bytes of service cal data from 0x1601160 into EEPROM[300].
0x16301e0 (tShell): EEPROM service cal data verified.
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 0 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 1 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 2 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 3 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 5 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 6 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 7 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 8 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 9 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 10 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 11 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 12 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 13 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 14 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank 15 reset to factory
0x16301e0 (tShell): cc_init: bank calConSt16atus reset to factory
 = 0x16301e0 (tShell0x): Optical hardware is not present.
1335528: value = 262143 = 0x3ffff
->

[exit_failure]

When i use

Code: [Select]

0444FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFI still only get SM although ST should also be available for TDS7104 scopes according to the manual... strange.

The maximum memory depth for the 7104 model (and maybe the 7054) is 3M (mask 04...). That's also what my scope now reports after upgrading the options.

[exit_failure]

I put together a github repo with the the most important stuff to get the scope going with Windows 2000/XP and a stand-alone version of the python script to unlock the options:

https://github.com/exit-failure/tds7000

I still have to update and clarify a couple of things. If you have anything that you think I should add, please let me know.

[RPuccio]

Thank you all so, so much for all your help here !

A friend of mine gave me a TDS7054 that my school was about to throw away. Dead HDD. I need a full reinstallation and I'm using Exit_failure's work to activate it.
I'll let you know if everything looks cool, gonna try an IDE-to-SD-Card adapter and install a fresh Win 2000 SP4 on it.
Seems like the python standalone app worked fine, I just had to manually change the directories but it generated a key I'll try later.
Fingers crossed I'll be able to make the whole thing boot on the new SD card again.

[exit_failure]

Quote from: RPuccio on 06-02-2022, 18:44:19

Thank you all so, so much for all your help here !

A friend of mine gave me a TDS7054 that my school was about to throw away. Dead HDD. I need a full reinstallation and I'm using Exit_failure's work to activate it.
I'll let you know if everything looks cool, gonna try an IDE-to-SD-Card adapter and install a fresh Win 2000 SP4 on it.
Seems like the python standalone app worked fine, I just had to manually change the directories but it generated a key I'll try later.
Fingers crossed I'll be able to make the whole thing boot on the new SD card again.

Great I could help. Let me if you have any questions.Also maybe think about replacing the two button cell batteries. One might be a little bit tricky to replace since it is inside of a module. I the scope has been broken for some time and has not been powered during that time, given the age of the scope. They might go bad soon if they're not already. I solved the problem by removing the old battery soldering some wires to the contact and glueing a standard CR2032 holder on top of the POWER CAP module. You can find information on how to do most of that in the first post of this thread.

[RPuccio]

Oh, I've only replaced one at the moment. The main issue here is find a way to boot the scope's PC !

F2 does not enter the bios setup, and I have basically no hard drive for that scope. The internal 7-segment display shows all the normal procedure and locks up on "L", indicating the PC is waiting for something to boot on.
I don't have a floppy drive, nor do I have an image file of the original drive or anything that could help. My computers at home are too recent and Win 2000 does not want to install on a new drive from those. I'm trying different methods and they all seem to fail, including going through the ethernet LAN port, which gives me a nice TRAP 00000006 EXCEPTION error - too bad !

I'm thinking about flashing an original img on a new SATA drive and using an IDE to SATA adapter... Doing my best, but I'm not knowledgeable enough (yet) to repair that beast alone !

[TurboTom]

Since there has been a PM request to publish my NVRAM-replacement board design, and I don't plan to make a business of this, I attached the whole project to this message.

The project has been designed on Target3001! ECAD which isn't that common but it's with what I started and stayed... I guess the evaluation version may suffice to modify the project, this may be necessary to replace the voltage regulator since it's somewhat awkward to source currently. Modification is not necessary if you just want to reproduce my design -- an archive with the required gerber files is inlcuded.

Whatsoever, I wish you best of success repairing your "TEK Boxes", and I'ld be happy if I could contribute a little bit with this project... 

[RPuccio]

Quick update !

Using PXE boot I've been able to run FreeDOS and do a KILLCMOS to finally change the boot order of the scope : CD drive, then IDE-HDD, then Floppy.
Now, when booting on my img file of Windows 2000, the screen shows "Starting Windows", with the loading bar going fully up, and nothing more ? Internal 7-segment still displays "L" and I can't boot into safe mode either.
The system does not boot into the CD drive either, even though I placed a Windows 2000 install disk in it - weird ?
I also need to upgrade the poor 128MB of RAM the PC has. If I can find a way to put up to 512MB, I might be able to run a windows install from PXE without the TRAP 00000006 EXCEPTION error message.
Any tips would be appreciated, or even better, a working img file I could burn to my IDE HDD 

[RPuccio]

At last, I finally got windows 2000 setup not to crash and it installed correctly ! Now the Tektronix software shows an error message when booting up, I think I need to install all the required drivers and check the communication with the powerPC

[RPuccio]

Update : I've been able to install windows 2000 with much trouble (it was installing as "D:\" instead of "C:\"). Now that it is fixed, I've installed the drivers, and the PCI2PCI driver crashes the computer. I need to delete DIOSERVICES.exe, as well as the three other .sys files to make Windows work again. And obviously, that driver is the one doing all the communication work between the PowerPC and the main board. I'm a bit stuck here, is my TDS impossible to repair ? Any tips ? Thanks a lot 

[RPuccio]

AT LAST, it is working again, thanks to TiN and my friend ! TiN had a ghost image of a Win98 TDS7104 and sent it to me. My friend converted it on a VM into a .img file which I will upload very soon.
It seems to be perfectly compatible with my TDS7054, and the software instantly recognized the serial number and option key corresponding to my scope - NVRAM is good for now I guess.
I've installed an SD Card in place of the dead HDD, and it works fine. I've been able to activate 3M and SM options on the scope, but not much more. Maybe I am not using the keygen correctly ?

This is what I use :
Model : TDS7054
Serial number : B010118
Option mask : 04FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Output key : XKNAJ-2EU3E-84836-Y2UBZ-8UEMS-WVR4W-FC2YB-98SEM-SWVB which seems wrong ?

The option mask might be in cause here, as the 3M and SM options were activated using option mask 04FFFF

The scope works perfectly, but if I can get a few more options out of it, it would be even better ! Thanks for your help

[exit_failure]

AT LAST, it is working again, thanks to TiN and my friend ! TiN had a ghost image of a Win98 TDS7104 and sent it to me. My friend converted it on a VM into a .img file which I will upload very soon.
It seems to be perfectly compatible with my TDS7054, and the software instantly recognized the serial number and option key corresponding to my scope - NVRAM is good for now I guess.
I've installed an SD Card in place of the dead HDD, and it works fine. I've been able to activate 3M and SM options on the scope, but not much more. Maybe I am not using the keygen correctly ?

This is what I use :
Model : TDS7054
Serial number : B010118
Option mask : 04FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Output key : XKNAJ-2EU3E-84836-Y2UBZ-8UEMS-WVR4W-FC2YB-98SEM-SWVB which seems wrong ?

The option mask might be in cause here, as the 3M and SM options were activated using option mask 04FFFF

The scope works perfectly, but if I can get a few more options out of it, it would be even better ! Thanks for your help

I get

Code: [Select]

XKNAJ-2EU3E-84836-Y2UBZ-8UEMS-WVR4W-FC2YB-98SEM-SWVBas well.

The last block does not necessarily have to contain 5 characters. Just try it :-)
Maybe take a picture of the original option key if anything goes wrong and you have to restore it.

[RPuccio]

Thanks a lot Exit_Failure.

Let me be doomed ! I already put it once but obviously made a mistake while typing, I've being more careful this time and it works   
It even shows "App 51 avail : not installed" and so on for all the app ID possible. Mission succeeded !
I've also calibrated it and it passed all the self-test. Victory !

Here is a mega link for TiN's win98 image, tested and working on his TDS7104 and my TDS7054 : https://mega.nz/file/8oZk3DxA#lVMpnDMNth2c7z9f2eEgmPmujBiUAqkjlEqnBJkNOtA
For those wanting to replace the original HDD, here is how to do it.
- First, be sure that the TDS computer has a working BIOS. In my case, the 7-segment display was going up to "L" and stopped there.
- Buy a replacement IDE HDD, or anything else that could work. In my case, I use a 16GB SD Card and an SD Card to IDE adapter, it fits in the little HDD drawer without much trouble.
- Download the win98 .img file to a working computer
- Use a software like WinImage or Balena Etcher to burn the image to the replacement drive. You can open .img file with WinImage, it will work, that's what I did.
- Eject the replacement drive from your modern computer and plug it into the scope.
- It should work right away, just wait for it to tell you "wait for your TDS7000 series scope to boot into windows"
- You'll certainly be asked a password to enter the network. It is not mandatory, just use the touchscreen and click on "okay". Windows does not have your keyboard or mouse drivers yet, so you'll have to have a working touchscreen before. I could redo the image if needed, just shoot me a PM.

If the computer fails to boot into windows right away, you can try to use the KILLCMOS program to force it to enter the setup. You are not forced to use floppy disks, even though that's way easier. In my case, I used Serva to establish a LAN connection with the computer, FreeDOS 1.2 to boot into a command line and the KILLCMOS program to reset the BIOS parameters.

Hopefully this might help other people

[Claudius089]

Hello ,
I have been following the conversation on the eevblog forum for several days https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/tek-csa7404-repair-project/650/ and I saw that you provide an image under an environment W98. Thank you for this picture.
I would like to know if you managed to migrate your TDS7054 to W2000 and if all the applications work. I'm interested because a few people tell me that the timing issues on my TDS7254 could be caused by software issues. Indeed I am convinced that my TDS7254 was the subject of an incomplete reinstallation before its purchase.
If the W2000 environment works on your TDS7054 and without abusing your kindness, would it be possible to obtain an image of the W2000 environment with the installation procedure that you performed during this migration.
I hope that the translation by g..le will be correct.

[exit_failure]

Hello ,
I have been following the conversation on the eevblog forum for several days https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/tek-csa7404-repair-project/650/ and I saw that you provide an image under an environment W98. Thank you for this picture.
I would like to know if you managed to migrate your TDS7054 to W2000 and if all the applications work. I'm interested because a few people tell me that the timing issues on my TDS7254 could be caused by software issues. Indeed I am convinced that my TDS7254 was the subject of an incomplete reinstallation before its purchase.
If the W2000 environment works on your TDS7054 and without abusing your kindness, would it be possible to obtain an image of the W2000 environment with the installation procedure that you performed during this migration.
I hope that the translation by g..le will be correct.

I can only talk about my TDS7104 but I managed to get I working with Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I can pull an Image of the Win XP installation in a couple of days if you want me to.

[exit_failure]

I've just updated the github repo (https://github.com/exit-failure/tds7000) with an extensive section about replacing the NVRAM backup battery and restoring the necessary settings:

https://github.com/exit-failure/tds7000/blob/main/NVRAM/README.md