TLA 704 Series Logic Analyzer - Hardrive None

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Hi

Can anyone confirm AC power requirements for the TLA 704.   I have just imported one form the USA and just want to check they are multi standard voltage wise as I plan to use it on 230Vac.   I have read the operator manual and it does not mention the power requirements apart from mentioning they will work on 110 / 230 etc I dont see any selector switch so I assume its automatic etc ??

Can anyone confirm there no links inside that require adjustment for 230

Not used one of these before somewhat surprising these have 6 huge fans in the back, Thats quite some cooling capacity. Probably hover above the bench when switched on!

As usual my unit has come without any cards installed so also looking for some advice on general purpose cards as I am going to have buy these and the flat data grabber cables seperately. I dont have any specific requirements more as bench eye candy than any practical use. I have a bit of a thing for logic analyser  at the moment and this is going to take up slightly less space than my current HP16500C


Many Thanks

Regards Chris

[Ice-Tea]

Check the datasheet/leaflet. If it doesn't have an order code for 110/230 it should be universal.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Yes had a look at all the information I could find including the service manual. Could not find anything and have just plugged it in. It did not go bang but wont boot. Some good information on this site about this so when I have read up I will probably have to post again as not really into PC equipment.From what I can tell no hard disk or it cannot find its operating system.

Many thansk for the reply

Regards Chris

[Ice-Tea]

Anything on screen? If not -> external VGA.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Screen works says no  fixed disk 0 fail then later no operating system.   Had a look at the bios but I don’t think it’s detected the hardrive or the hard drive is faulty.  Been reading through some threads on here about replacing with solid state drive.

[Mechatrommer]

teardown picture?

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Not quite at the tear down stage yet just trying to gather some information first. Apparently they don’t boot if the real time clock battery fails but I’m guessing this is good as it maintaining time and date.

When I look at the boot Bios it says Hardrive None and  the auto detect does not work for any of the four drives that could be possibly installed.

I now think I need to try and find the hard drive and perhaps go down the solid state drive route. I’m afraid I don’t know much about computers and hardware so will probably need some advice on what I need to buy. 

Does anyone know if a standard ide drive will fit or anything special or easiest route to install a SSD.  I assume I will need to acquire windows 95 from somewhere.   

Thanks for the support
Regards Chris.

PS I changed the title of the original post as it didn’t blow up on 230V I wasn’t expecting this to be a repair as I bought from eBay as a working item.

[nctnico]

Installing Windows is a bit of a chore on these machines because the lack of a CD-rom drive. A 44pin IDE drive will do just fine as a primary drive. If you are not fluent with computers then better get some help from someone who does. You can copy Windows98 installation files onto to hard drive and install from there. AFAIK you can also use Windows 2000 but installing that takes more effort without a CD-rom drive.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I think your suggestion of getting someone to help is a good idea.  I can see me asking one of the software engineers at work to do a little job for me. Thanks


A few years ago I through out loads of old windows and dos disks thinking  I would never ever use them. I’m kicking myself again

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I have been buying various parts and now waiting for them to arrive.

SSD flash to IDE adapters
SD to IDE adapter
Windows 98 image
Windows 95 image
Windows 95 boot floppy disk
Modern USB to floppy drive

Here is the strip down picture as was requested and shows the boot problem and how to extract the IDE. I’m not sure the IDE adapters I have ordered will fit it looks like a smaller cable. Any advice welcome on what to do next. Many Thanks

https://youtu.be/mc_vYsNttew

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

 I have various parts on order now including an old laptop hard drive which I’m hoping is going to be the simplest solution for me.   I ask the software guys at work for assistance and just got the Paddington bear hard stare of how dare you make me take my headphones off and speak to a human. So I’m back with some more questions.

I have a new windows ten computer and have found my old computer that has xp installed and has A mixture of IDE and sata installed. I don’t have a machine with an internal floppy.  I have bought a usb floppy drive and this appears to work with the old and new computer.

The problem I am having is trying to create a 3.5 floppy boot disk. I found a few .exe files on the internet that can create dos or windows boots disk. These all fail using my  usb floppy drive and complain about the wrong number of sectors.  I find that  I can format the floppy on the xp machine using the tick option make bootable. The logic analysers does read this disk but falls off the end as the disk has no content.

So my question here is there something wrong with my usb external floppy drive why can I not make a boot disk.  I was hoping to install the operating system onto the analysers using floppy disks

I have also arrived a flash drive and adapter IDE adapter. This has a flash drive voltage setting link for 3.5 or 5 volt. How do I know what voltage flash drive I have. It’s an old flash drive I bought off eBay I have done a search for the serial number but found nothing  SSD-C01G-3550 Silicon Systems.   I’m guessing the last number could mean 3.5 to 5 volt. 

My thoughts here are that I can install the flash drive in my XP computer and create a FAT format and then some how install windows 95 or 98 from the cd installed in the Xp computer.  Don’t really know how to achieve this yet so any advice would be welcome.

I have also downloaded various windows iso images but even more confused as how I “mount” them, No nails didn’t work.

I am sure could have done all of the above when I worked on computer first time round back in 95 but have just too many turns on the coil to remember.

Thanks

Thanks Regards Chris

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Had some time this morning. I plugged the flash drive into the old windows xp machine and did a FAT format. I didn’t get the option too creat the MS DOS startup disk. How do I make the drive bootable and get windows 98 installed ?

My other thoughts if anyone on here has done this do you have a disk image of you TLA704 you could let me have, I assume I could drop this on the machine and it would take care of all the software and driver issues.

Thanks Regards chris

PS I went with the 5 volt setting for the flash

[nctnico]

I already looked in my archives but I don't seem to have a TLA704 image. IIRC I used the Windows 98 tool from the CD to create 3.5" disks with the installation software. For this you may need a real diskdrive. Another option is to use a seperate power supply and a 44pin to 40pin converter and connect a CDrom drive to the TLA704 directly. This may require a MS-DOS startup disk with drivers to access the CD-ROM drive from DOS.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Thanks for looking at the software for me.

I was playing around with it yesterday and I managed to  format the SSD card with sys commands and a full windows 98 cd copied to it. I test this on an old computer before installing in the LA, I got it to boot into dos and got the win98 splash startup screen.

However when installed  it in the LA it would not boot. I think it did more as it does not come up no operating system. It just does nothing rapidly flashing cursor. When I press any key it tries to access the floppy.

I have not been able to write my own floppy boot disks, but have some ordered on eBay. I also note from reading the LA bios it can boot from a pcmia card slot in the back. So I have ordered a compact flash adapter and a new compact flash card to try. I also ordered a usb compact flash adapter so maybe I can download to the flash more easily and perhaps use a utility to creat a bootable drive.

I’m at the stage we’re I don’t know if it’s a problem with the hardware or just me that doesn’t have a clue about the installation processes. Perhaps a combination.

I also have an old laptop drive and 44 40 pin adapters cable. Would anyone happen to know if you can power a full size 40 pin drive from the 44 pin cable? 

So I have lots of bits and bobs to try. I guess getting into old computer is like any other hobby there a critical mass of spares and parts required before you can progress.

Thanks best regards Chris

[Mechatrommer]

Installing Windows is a bit of a chore on these machines because the lack of a CD-rom drive.

not really if you get used to it

1) if the system support secondary drive, then copying Win install files to the secondary drive from PC with CD-Rom and then installing it in the device and boot from that.
2) as you said, copy the install files into primary and then installing from there. it might work iirc its been a long time since i did that.
3) put the device harddrive into PC and install as normal PC. bring that HDD to the device and let the OS discover new hardware during the first boot. (prepare device drivers in HDD beforehand)

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

My 40-44 pin adapter arrived today. And blow me when I installed the drive in an old computer it booted as a second drive. I booted the machine into XP and could see the drive from the logic analyser. In properties the drive was complaining as being full. I removed an year 2000 virus checker and did a defrag, copied the drive and made a drive image. I  mounted the drive on a SSD and reinstalled in the logic analyser and it booted.  I then installed the original drive and that also booted. So I’m at a total loss I cannot see what I did to repair it but it’s working now. If anyone wants a copy of my drive let me know and I will create a drop box.

It’s complaining about the keyboard not working but it appears to work as does the mouse pad. I believe there can be few issues getting the keyboard drivers installed correctly on these.

Thanks for all the help and advice, it’s a shame I cannot tell you how I fixed it.

Regards Chris

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

If anyone still has one of these running window 95 I’m looking for a special keyboard driver file. This is called KBMonit.exe. I think this is likely used to decode the encoder knobs as the keyboard does appear to work. I have contacted everyone I can think of but so far no luck. If you can help please PM. I am trying to put a collection of software and driver files together to make it easier for everyone going forward.

Many thanks regards Chris

Tek notes regards file and location.

Download this software for use on your TLA704 or TLA711 Logic Analyzer Mainframes. EXE file includes release notes and version history document. If you will be running Version 3.2 with Windows95 on a TLA704, it is necessary to use the older version of the knob monitor file called KBMonit.exe located in the following directory: C:\Program Files\TLA700\System. Save this file to a temporary folder before loading V3.2. Once V3.2 is loaded you can then copy over the new version of this file with the one saved in the temporary folder. You will get a ``Front panel not responding`` error message if you don`t use the older knob monitor file.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I think I have the required file now. Many thanks . Anyone who needs a copy please let me know.  I will probably create a drop box with a complete backup of all files required.

Regards Chris