Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...

[joeqsmith]

Put the new SSD into the system and turned it on.  Boots fast.

The long term SSD test continues.  For something that was to be problematic, we are now well past the three year mark with the one SSD in the 64xi and a whopping four years on the 8500.  I have yet to see a file get corrupt.   Just a recap for the 64xi, I made no changes to the OS to try an increase the life of the drive.  Just mirrored the drive over and called it a day.   This is still my main scope.   

Also, the knobs are still tight!  lol.

[rsjsouza]

That is a great report, Joe. These SSDs are surely smart so they don't wear out that easily. Although I would inagine that a regular PC would be much more data intensive than the oscilloscope, thus being the worst case scenario for these drives.

[joeqsmith]

Good point.  I installed a SSD in my laptop maybe 5 years ago but it's not the primary drive.    When I finally retired my XP based P4 machine in 2016,  I used a 200G M.2 drive as the primary in the new PC.  It's too early to say but so far I have not seen any problems with it.   

[rsjsouza]

I have five year-old Samsung 840 SSDs running on work laptops that do not show signs of wear - even with intensive embedded Linux and u-boot projects being built on them quite regularly for about three out of the five years.

Not SSDs, but I love the statistics put by these guys at:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/

[joeqsmith]

I have five year-old Samsung 840 SSDs running on work laptops that do not show signs of wear - even with intensive embedded Linux and u-boot projects being built on them quite regularly for about three out of the five years.

Not SSDs, but I love the statistics put by these guys at:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/

I am not aware of anyone I know in person running SSDs that has had problems.  They only seem to exist on the internet.  Larger sampling or typical internet regurgitating, hard to say.     I'm sure I am setting myself up for a massive SSD failure at home.   

[rsjsouza]

I have five year-old Samsung 840 SSDs running on work laptops that do not show signs of wear - even with intensive embedded Linux and u-boot projects being built on them quite regularly for about three out of the five years.

Not SSDs, but I love the statistics put by these guys at:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/

I am not aware of anyone I know in person running SSDs that has had problems.  They only seem to exist on the internet. Larger sampling or typical internet regurgitating, hard to say.     I'm sure I am setting myself up for a massive SSD failure at home.   

Well, if it's on the Internet it must be true, right?

I have the same feel sometimes... When things go too well... Murphy is at the corner waiting to strike!

[joeqsmith]

I have five year-old Samsung 840 SSDs running on work laptops that do not show signs of wear - even with intensive embedded Linux and u-boot projects being built on them quite regularly for about three out of the five years.

Not SSDs, but I love the statistics put by these guys at:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/

I am not aware of anyone I know in person running SSDs that has had problems.  They only seem to exist on the internet. Larger sampling or typical internet regurgitating, hard to say.     I'm sure I am setting myself up for a massive SSD failure at home.   

Well, if it's on the Internet it must be true, right?

I have the same feel sometimes... When things go too well... Murphy is at the corner waiting to strike!

I think sometimes people repost so much garbage that eventually everyone starts to believe it, only because of the shier number of posts.   

Because I have posted so many of my home made probes in this thread, I may as well continue....   

[tautech]

Just watched the diff probe vid Joe, great work and thanks for sharing. 

[joeqsmith]

Glad you enjoyed it.   If you do a search on this site, there are a few threads where people have attempted to make their own higher frequency higher voltage differential probes. 

During the video, I mentioned used two circuits.  One for the high frequency, the other for the DC and mixing the two.  This is not a new idea and may have merit for this design.

[bson]

I am not aware of anyone I know in person running SSDs that has had problems.  They only seem to exist on the internet.  Larger sampling or typical internet regurgitating, hard to say.

It's just people who don't understand what the data retention spec refers to; it's the guaranteed minimum retention, at the end of a device's useful life.  It the retention guaranteed when it starts issuing SMART warnings.

https://www.micron.com/about/blogs/2015/may/addressing-data-retention-in-ssds

However, data retention specs are not given for a new device.  It is very important to note that published specifications for data retention describe the behavior of the device only at the end of its prescribed service life.

The JEDEC specification for data retention tells us that for enterprise storage devices, data retention at the end of the service life shall be at least three months (stored at 40°C).  For SSDs in the client computing market, data retention shall be at least one year after the drive’s service life (assuming it’s stored at 30°C).

[joeqsmith]

I am not aware of anyone I know in person running SSDs that has had problems.  They only seem to exist on the internet.  Larger sampling or typical internet regurgitating, hard to say.

It's just people who don't understand what the data retention spec refers to; it's the guaranteed minimum retention, at the end of a device's useful life.  It the retention guaranteed when it starts issuing SMART warnings.

Could be.  If you take the time to read some of the early comments, one person was talking about a couple of weeks was all they were seeing.  But again, it's the internet.

[joeqsmith]

The parts for my next version of a differential probe arrived.  However,  I ran into a small setback and it will be a while until I can try building something up.  My plan is to still go ahead with the project in the next month or so.  Sorry for the delay.

[rsjsouza]

You disappoint me, Joe. You talk about minor setbacks as if your house was struck by lightning...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hear-kitty-kitty-kitty-nope-not-that-kind-of-cat/msg1646627/#msg1646627

[joeqsmith]

It's been a mini marathon here the last few weeks.  I knew this new probe would not be very good starting out.  Its mostly made from parts I salvaged, which made for some poor choices in the design.   I assume the $130 MICSIG diff probe would out perform it in any test.       

https://youtu.be/0thOfk4I3qs

[joeqsmith]

Necroposting my own thread....

Someone was asking about this old scope so I dug up this thread and thought, it's been five years now that the SSD has been running in both the 64Xi and the 8500A.   Time for an update. 

I don't use the 8500A often but the 64Xi continues to be my primary scope and sees a fair amount of use.  I have not had a single problem with the two drives.

I recently went to use the 8500A and it came up with some musical song and an error about how it had overheated the last time it was used.   I was concerned that maybe the SSD was the problem but it was the battery for the NVRAM was all.   Installed a new battery,  reset the BIOS and it was back in business.   

I picked up an old VNA from around this same era and ended up buying a couple more of the Transcend drives for it as well.   That PC is running Windows 2000, compared with XP in the two LeCroys.  It's been in service for a few months now and is seeing a fair amount of use as well with no problems.   I wonder if these drives  are starting to become harder to find so I bought a few of them.  They were shipped direct from the factory.   
 
On the 8500A, I had installed a Gb Ethernet card which also seemed to raise some questions if it was going to cause problems.  After five years, again it seems to be fine. 

Had replaced the drive on the 8500A with an SSD.  It's been working very well.   I had bought two different ones to try.  One SATA one PATA.   The SATA with adapter went in the 8500A, the PATA is going into this system.  Different brand, we will see.

Just be careful with SSDs in that scope, as they tend to suffer from file system corruption (I tried several ones, including the Transcend PATA SSD on your picture), and all suffered from the same problem.

The reason seems to be that the SSDs only really support UDMA modes, which for PATA requires a 80 conductor cable to work reliably. The scope however uses a 44pin cable (there are no 84 conductor cables, at least I'm not aware of them) which is not really suited for UDMA66 or faster modes. Another forum user (Tunersandwich) who has the same scope made the same experience, he also tried a SSHD but that was a no-go either.

In the end I went back to spinning rust, i.e. a modern fast SATA laptop drive connected through a cheap SATA-PATA bridge. Works fine and absolutely reliable.

$7350 for the Rigol DS6064 or $9660 for the DS6104.  I assume this is the market LeCroy is going after.   

Not really. The WaveRunner Series starts quite a bit above that.

The WaveSurfer 3000 is the one that competes with the Rigol DS6000 scopes, although no-one really buys them anyways due to their poor value for money.

[gbenyhe]

Hi Joe,
Thanks for your pics and all, they are incredibly useful for me during the refurbishment of my own 64Xi. I am just repairing the broken standoffs on the front cover's backside. First I gently fix the broken parts together by carefully melting them with a soldering iron, then give it a prosthetic machined from textile bakelite glued on it with a two components resin.   

[joeqsmith]

Hi Joe,
Thanks for your pics and all, they are incredibly useful for me during the refurbishment of my own 64Xi. I am just repairing the broken standoffs on the front cover's backside. First I gently fix the broken parts together by carefully melting them with a soldering iron, then give it a prosthetic machined from textile bakelite glued on it with a two components resin.

I highly suspect the same standoffs on mine are also broken as the whole front cover is dangling.  The thin strip of plastic along the outside edge continues to brake away.  I have thought about rebuilding my cover with fiberglass and filler but the scope has other mechanical problems as well.   I wonder if their new products are this bad.   Wife may not be to happy with me if I buy another scope.   

[joeqsmith]

Today's job, the CMOS battery died on the old scope.   To change it, you have pull the whole scope down.   

The old SSD is still working fine after six years now.  Not bad for something that I was told would not hold up.   

Decided to build up the two corners of the cheap plastic case.   They did not use a thermoset, so it was easy enough to melt in new gray plastic, a quick sanding and some paint.  Most of the bosses had also failed that hold the front bezel in place,  I glued all of them and built up the area around them.  Then drilled new holes and used longer screws.   

[joeqsmith]

Went to use the old LeCroy waveblunder today and it died while running it.   Failed to turn on after.  Nothing on the screen, no beeps.  Tore it back apart and the power supply appeared fine.  I had bought a scrapped unit for the DAS which was swapped into mine.  It's been running fine up till today. 

It appears the motherboard failed.   I had the spare so swapped it out.   Scope fired up but Windows needed to authenticate with the new MB.   I was very surprised I could call the MS line and authenticate it.  It's Windows XP and still supported. 

Of course, something was rattling in the display and out fell more broken plastic.  More repairs.  Finally go to put the back cover on and one of the mounts broke.   All of the plastic on this DSO continues to degrade.   It has such a rough life sitting on the bench.   More JB Weld...

I wonder how Siglent's plastics will stand the test of time.

[joeqsmith]

With the scope back together,  I connected the MB to a standard PC power supply to see if I could sort out the problem.   It was totally dead.   But it fired right up on the bench.  I let it run pong demo overnight and it never crashed.   So I downloaded some diagnostics onto a FLASH stick to see if I could stress it enough to fail.  As soon as I plugged in the stick, the PC died.   Looking at the USB port, the plastic spacer had cracked allowing it to short the power supply.  Looking at the other connector, the supply rails are very close to the spring tangs.   Normally, I don't use these side ports but I keep that mouse plugged in.  Guessing this bad connector was shorting the supply and preventing it from powering up as I can't find anything else wrong with it.   

I don't know about you but I constantly take the 50:50 guess with USB and will attempt to gently force the connections when they are upside down.  The ones on the side are blind so it happens more often than with the front one.   

[joeqsmith]

Pulled the bad USB connector.  The center bridge is held in place with some tabs.  I suspect when I attempted to plug something into the lower connector upside down, I bent the support tabs which then pushed it into the power ground pins of the top connector.  Looks like I had jacked up one of the lower pins when I broke the plastic tab.   

I hate USB....

The replacement connector has a ridged center spacer like the one on the left.   

[joeqsmith]

I had replaced the 256M stick with a 1G stick when I first repaired the scope but had left the stock CPU.   I had tried to find a few NOS Pentium Ms but no luck.  I ended up buying three pulls that at least were well packaged.  The first one I tried lasted a short time and failed.  I installed the last one into this MB and will let it run overnight.   

Mouse and keyboard plugged into the new connector playing pinball in demo mode.   

****
Ran overnight without any issue.  Looks like this CPU is going to be fine.

[joeqsmith]

After swapping the USB connector, I reinstalled the original computer board into my scope.  Odd, XP didn't bark about the swap this time.   

The parts scope still has a mechanical drive and the DAS has a problem.  Also, missing knobs, plastic in worse shape than the one I use.  Still, good power supply, computer, LCD and encoder board.   It also has the M processor and 1G stick.   Two out of the three CPU pulls appear good but I kept the originals just in case...

One day, a new scope and I will donate these two to some poor sole...

[KungFuJosh]

One day, a new scope and I will donate these two to some poor sole...

Does that mean you're going to stomp them to death? 😉

[joeqsmith]

One day, a new scope and I will donate these two to some poor sole...

Does that mean you're going to stomp them to death? 😉

  Soul... 

One day you would think I would proof.... Nope... Adds color.