Windows oscilloscopes

[schmitt trigger]

I borrowed a LeCroy Wavesurfer 44XS scope.
I had used LeCroy scopes previously, and know they are very high performing instruments.
But never used one with a Windows interface. Windows XP.

From a cold start to the time one can actually start manipulating the controls, it takes 6 minutes and 20 seconds to boot.
Even after boot, the screen freezes from time to time.
I ended returning it and getting another scope.

I had previously used another Windows scope, an Agilent if I remember correctly, and had also despised it.

What is your experience with Windows scopes?
Note, I am not talking about USB scopes like the Pico, but actual stand alone instruments running on a Windows environment.

[jjoonathan]

I have a RTO1024. It takes 90 seconds to boot (Win 7). That's not good. It's also not as bad as many other recent Windows-based scopes, so I count my blessings. Still, I was very happy to see R&S bring the boot times of the RTB/RTM/RTA down to 10-ish seconds and I'm a huge fan of the recent wave of Chinese test equipment that runs on bare metal and boots instantly. Hopefully slow boot times were a phase that we can start to put behind us rather than a neverending rising tide of awfulness.

Hey, at least oscilloscopes don't come pre-packaged with candy crush ads. Yet.

[schmitt trigger]

The problem I see to embed Windows on a piece of equipment, is that the OS may become obsolete while the instrument itself could still be a high performance one.

That and the horrendous boot times and the random screen freeze, and an user interface which simply doesn’t feel it responds in real time.

[joeqsmith]

I borrowed a LeCroy Wavesurfer 44XS scope.
...
But never used one with a Windows interface. Windows XP.

From a cold start to the time one can actually start manipulating the controls, it takes 6 minutes and 20 seconds to boot.
Even after boot, the screen freezes from time to time.
...
What is your experience with Windows scopes?
Note, I am not talking about USB scopes like the Pico, but actual stand alone instruments running on a Windows environment.

I own a couple of old Windows scopes and a network analyzer.   All three are running an SSD.  The 64Xi has been using an SSD for about 5 years now with no problems.  The two LeCroys also have more RAM and the faster of the two has a 1Gb Ethernet card which vastly improved data collection times.  I have used a few other older Windows based  Arbs and scopes.  I use Ethernet rather than GPIB to communicate with them and networking is easy.   The only exception to this was a Tektronix Arb where they were just starting to learn how to use Ethernet.  Performance was so poor, it was faster to use GPIB than Ethernet!!

One of my old LeCroy DSOs had Win2k installed.   From what I remember, installing XP slowed the boot times but I gained the time back with the SSD. It was a wash in the end. 

Power up boot time for the old LeCory Waverunner 64Xi with added RAM, last version of XP service pack and SSD:
At 30 seconds, XP has loaded
At 45 seconds it has initialized the hardware
At 55 seconds it is triggering and displaying all four waveforms
At 65 seconds it runs the first calibration

It will then recal a fair amount while it continues to warm up, unless it's not triggering.   Then it waits for your trigger to arrive to recal.  It's cost me more than once.  It's not uncommon for me to force a trigger to make sure the scope is ready to capture.   Sound dumb?  It is.   

To say the mechanics of the 64Xi are poor would be an understatement.   The plastic continues to erode (it has a hard life sitting on my bench) and the steel is flimsy.  What I would expect from a $500 scope.   When I got it, the knobs were sloppy and some were missing.  LeCroy provided a new set which for the most part have stayed put but one fell off a few months ago that I thought had became a cat toy. 

[james_s]

Windows has no place on a piece of test equipment IMO. I remember using a scope at work at a former job that booted Windows XP, remember thinking what a kludge it felt like.

[joeqsmith]

My old 7200A with the 486 runs PSOS.  Boots fairly fast with a spinning drive.     

I think the worse thing I used was an Agilent LA 167xx that ran some flavor of UNIX.  Maybe HPUX.   It not only takes minutes to boot, it can be very sluggish with normal use.   

What are the new higher end systems using now?   I was talking with a friend who had demo'ed a new Keysight VNA a while back and they said it was running Windows 7.  Surely they aren't putting 10 on them, or are they?!   

*****
At least for Keysight, looks like they are using 10 in their VNAs.   That must be a nightmare.
http://na.support.keysight.com/pna/win10-upgrade.html

****
Looks like Teledyne is also using 10
http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/manuals/scope_system_recovery_instructions.pdf

Also appears Keysights Infiniium Z-Series is running Windows.

Appears Tektronix uses it as well for their high end Arbs and DSOs.
https://www.tek.com/faq/windows-10-version

[Wuerstchenhund]

I borrowed a LeCroy Wavesurfer 44XS scope.
I had used LeCroy scopes previously, and know they are very high performing instruments.
But never used one with a Windows interface. Windows XP.

From a cold start to the time one can actually start manipulating the controls, it takes 6 minutes and 20 seconds to boot.

This is normal as these scopes came with painfully slow 2.5" Fujitsu and Toshiba hard drives, and if your scope still had the original one then there's also a good chance it was fighting with an increasing number of bad sectors (common for these drives).

In addition, LeCroy skimped a bit when it came to RAM (IIRC the WRXs has 256MB standard) and CPU (IIRC a Celeron-M) in these scopes which didn't help.

Luckily, these problems are easily fixable with an EIDE SSD, more RAM and a faster CPU, and for little money.

Even after boot, the screen freezes from time to time.

Which may hint to the hard drive being on its way out.

I had previously used another Windows scope, an Agilent if I remember correctly, and had also despised it.

If that was one of the early Infiniium generation scopes (548xx Series) then this is understandable, as these scopes came with similarly slow hard drives and little RAM, and on top of came with a clunky UI that was designed for mouse operation.

What is your experience with Windows scopes?

Very good, actually.

Yes, boot times are, even with SSDs, longer than with a cheap embedded platform scope, but considering that any scope only reaches its full spec compliance after a warm-up period (usually around 20mins) who cares? These scopes are made for professional environments where they are normally powered on in the morning and switched off at night (or remain powered 24/7).

But Windows allows me to run other software on the scope without the need for a separate PC. We often use MathLab or our own software to perform specialist signal analysis, which even on older LeCroy scopes was made easy thanks to a set of APIs.

Then there's mundane stuff like how easy it is to network the scope and access or provide data shares, remotely access the scopes (although embedded scopes got some way to that thanks to their built-in web interface, which is still much slower than RDPing into a Windows scope), or the simple fact that I can access pretty much any size of USB storage media, no matter if it's formatted in FAT32, NTFS or exFAT.

The problem I see to embed Windows on a piece of equipment, is that the OS may become obsolete while the instrument itself could still be a high performance one.

And yet no Windows XP based scope stopped working because Microsoft ended all XP support, but instead continues to function as well as it did when XP was still a supported OS.

You probably also didn't spend much time thinking in the often creepy software that is lingering in embedded devices, including the crop of cheap embedded platform scopes running some antique version of the Linux kernel with some similar dated versions of other FOSS packages, most of which won't ever see any update.

A test instrument, even if it runs Windows, is not a PC, it's a piece of kit that fullfills a function. And it does this no matter if the OS is current or old.

[Wuerstchenhund]

What are the new higher end systems using now?   I was talking with a friend who had demo'ed a new Keysight VNA a while back and they said it was running Windows 7.  Surely they aren't putting 10 on them, or are they?!   

Actually, they do. Most new instruments that use Windows use a form of Windows 10, usually Windows 10 Embedded/IoT . Which is closer to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC than to the standard Windows 10 Home/Pro variants.

[coromonadalix]

Windows has no place on a piece of test equipment IMO. I remember using a scope at work at a former job that booted Windows XP, remember thinking what a kludge it felt like.

You have lots of Infinium series scopes, they work pretty well  ?  i would not be scared to use a "windows" scope,  sure to boot time could be a nag, and if you have a proper hdd backup, you have some solutions to replace a mecanical drive.

ssd or sata dom   and ide dom       Dom = "disk on module"

That would be a good start,   ram or motherboard upgrades could help too,  but youll never have an instant / ready scope unless it is always powered on ?

\i use tons of embedded windows ce6 and windows 7 computers, never had a glitch if they are properly configured, if there are no useless services started ...

my 2 cents

[tooki]

What are the new higher end systems using now?   I was talking with a friend who had demo'ed a new Keysight VNA a while back and they said it was running Windows 7.  Surely they aren't putting 10 on them, or are they?!   

Why wouldn't they? Windows Embedded 7 SP1's extended support ends exactly today, as coincidence would have it (that already being 5 years after mainstream support ended), and the costly extended security update support will end in 3 years. It'd be lunacy to be designing it into new products, especially given that Windows 10 is largely just as good as 7. And in all likelihood, Microsoft wouldn't issue new licenses for it anyway.

If anything, I'd say Windows 10 performs a lot better than 7, so I can't see any reason why you wouldn't design new equipment around it, and offer upgrades to it where possible.

And nowadays, with fast SSD storage instead of hard disks, a carefully tuned Windows 10 should be able to boot in seconds. So if the company designed the instrument application well, they could have the instrument booting very quickly.  (Not that it looks like that's what's done. But in theory they could!)

[tautech]

What are the new higher end systems using now?   I was talking with a friend who had demo'ed a new Keysight VNA a while back and they said it was running Windows 7.  Surely they aren't putting 10 on them, or are they?!   

Actually, they do. Most new instruments that use Windows use a form of Windows 10, usually Windows 10 Embedded/IoT . Which is closer to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC than to the standard Windows 10 Home/Pro variants.

And of those you've used using W10, are the boot times improved from XP/W7 days ?

[joeqsmith]

I would have thought the big players would be working towards a common OS they could maintain rather than letting MS decide their fate.   I doubt the combined T&M market does much for MS bottom line.   Once the home PC market dries up, hard to believe MS would continue to maintain it.   Surely with so much at stake, they must be thinking about it.   

[tooki]

I would have thought the big players would be working towards a common OS they could maintain rather than letting MS decide their fate.   I doubt the combined T&M market does much for MS bottom line.   Once the home PC market dries up, hard to believe MS would continue to maintain it.   Surely with so much at stake, they must be thinking about it.

That’s a rather odd viewpoint.

Windows is so successful in the business market precisely because it is perceived as a stable platform, in the sense of “it’s not going anywhere, and Microsoft will support us long term”. And that perception is based on Microsoft’s long track record of doing just that. Microsoft has proven itself to be a trustworthy supplier of embedded OSes.

Vendors of devices with embedded OSes choose their embedded OS based on numerous criteria. Long term support is one. Another is how quickly and easily they can develop their device software, and in this, Windows has a TON going for it, given that the very best of the best development environments are on Windows, and there are gazillions of development tools and libraries available from Microsoft and countless third party vendors, all saving development time.

You think the home PC market is going to go away?!? Please lemme know what drugs you’re on, I need to find an escape from reality now and then. In all seriousness, a) there’s no meaningful difference between a standard home PC and a standard office PC, and b) there’s no indication of home computers going away, especially not Windows PCs. Tablets have eroded some use cases for home PCs, but not all, and that’s not changing any time soon. If there is one characteristic one can ascribe to Microsoft, it’s that they want to have a foot in everything. Only catastrophic defeat ever compels them to abandon a market (like phones and music players). As the #1 OS for home and office PCs, what possible incentive would they have to abandon that market, the one that is the linchpin of their entire empire?!!

[switchabl]

Once the home PC market dries up, hard to believe MS would continue to maintain it.   Surely with so much at stake, they must be thinking about it.

The home PC may be in decline, but the same is not true for the business market. So Windows is unlikely to go away anytime soon. It is becoming more of a platform for selling their cloud services though and it is maybe not quite clear where Windows Embedded fits with this strategy (now rebranded as "Windows IoT Enterprise"). It still comes with 10+ years (extended) support life, so they wouldn't stop maintaining that tomorrow either.

I would have thought the big players would be working towards a common OS they could maintain rather than letting MS decide their fate.

Funnily enough, HP/Agilent had some instruments running their own UNIX flavour (HP-UX; although the OS itself wasn't developed by the T&M division). I think I have never waited longer for anything to boot, felt like 15 minutes.

These days, it would be hard to make the case for maintaining your own OS. If you run full-blown PC hardware and don't want to (or can't) use Windows, Linux is the obvious choice.

But Windows is still a solid choice for high-end, low-volume T&M instruments. The cost of the license is negligible for something that costs several 10000€. You can just use a standard industrial mainboard, no need to design your own PC. Boot time from an SSD is not that bad (and potentially way less than warm-up, self-test and cal times anyway). Users are already familiar with it and can install their own custom analysis software. And the remote PC software and the on-device UI can share components and be developed by the same team using the same tools.

If you want to hedge your bets as a manufacturer, the best way will probably be to follow good programming practices and make your software modular, so you can reuse as much as possible when you port to a new OS (or just the next model with new hardware).

[joeqsmith]

I would think the large companies would work together to form a standard OS they would all use.  Of course, the hardware would go away as well so they may want to start working towards a common platform.   Maybe Fortive will take over all of the T&M companies, forcing the companies to work together.    Then again, is there even a market for high end equipment anymore?  Maybe the low end equipment with it's fast boot times is good enough.  2020 has taught us we don't need the majority of the work force, so there's little need for office PCs.   

[tooki]

No part of that makes sense.

If anything, COVID has demonstrated that a lot more work can be done by telecommuting than bosses would like to admit. And how’s that done? On office PCs. Just because it’s a laptop doesn’t make it any less of an office PC.

High end test gear? Nah, who needs it now. We’ll just design those multi-ten-gigabit signal paths by gut intuition. Seriously, what on earth would make you think we don’t need it? If anything, we need more of it now than ever.

And what possible incentive do the T&M companies have to collaborate on an OS? That makes literally no sense. Collaborating on a common hardware platform makes even less sense.

Not that there is even the slightest shadow of a chance that PC hardware will go away, as you bizarrely believe.

[joeqsmith]

You think those people are doing anything from home besides golfing?   You don't need a PC to golf.  You need golf clubs and maybe a golf cart.  Nothing too high tech.   

In a short time we have gone from computers being humans, to mainframes, to workstations and now some sort of toy PC thing.  We have had countless OSs come and go.  Things will continue to change.

[james_s]

I would think the large companies would work together to form a standard OS they would all use.  Of course, the hardware would go away as well so they may want to start working towards a common platform.   Maybe Fortive will take over all of the T&M companies, forcing the companies to work together.    Then again, is there even a market for high end equipment anymore?  Maybe the low end equipment with it's fast boot times is good enough.  2020 has taught us we don't need the majority of the work force, so there's little need for office PCs.

That doesn't make sense. At its peak the unemployment rate was what, 10% Maybe 15% The vast majority of that being the service industry, things like hotels, cruise ships, airlines, bars, clubs, and other "non-essential" stuff. I've been working from home full time since March and I'm certainly not just goofing off, if anything I spend more time actually working than I do when I'm in the office because I don't waste over 2 hours a day commuting. We use our PCs as much as always at work, and rely on them even more due to the fact that all of the meetings are online instead of face to face.

The ubiquitous office tool we don't need anymore is desk phones. I haven't had one of those the entire time at this job, and even at the job before that they felt like anachronisms of a former era. I always hated it when a colleague would call me instead of just sending me an instant message or email.

[tooki]

You think those people are doing anything from home besides golfing?   You don't need a PC to golf.  You need golf clubs and maybe a golf cart.  Nothing too high tech.   

We know they're not just at home golfing because the work is getting done. 

Are you attempting to joke, or do you actually believe what you wrote? Because if you do believe it… oh man…

In a short time we have gone from computers being humans, to mainframes, to workstations and now some sort of toy PC thing.  We have had countless OSs come and go.  Things will continue to change.

Change yes. But PCs aren't just going to disappear. Windows isn't just going to disappear. Mainframes haven't disappeared, either (your bank still runs them, and IBM is happy to keep supplying them).

[Fungus]

Change yes. But PCs aren't just going to disappear. Windows isn't just going to disappear.

Windows is basically becoming "free" for home users and Microsoft is working hard to add stuff that makes Linux users feel at home. It's not going anywhere soon.

[newbrain]

You think those people are doing anything from home besides golfing?

My time reporting sheet would like to have a word with you.

And it's not just me. The average productivity didn't go down for us.
Of course some areas improved, while other worsened.
So much that the company is starting to think long term and even providing some home office furniture (desks, etc.) in addition to the usual IT stuff (monitors, KB&M ec.).

[mansaxel]

The problem I see to embed Windows on a piece of equipment, is that the OS may become obsolete while the instrument itself could still be a high performance one.

And yet no Windows XP based scope stopped working because Microsoft ended all XP support, but instead continues to function as well as it did when XP was still a supported OS.

You probably also didn't spend much time thinking in the often creepy software that is lingering in embedded devices, including the crop of cheap embedded platform scopes running some antique version of the Linux kernel with some similar dated versions of other FOSS packages, most of which won't ever see any update.

A test instrument, even if it runs Windows, is not a PC, it's a piece of kit that fullfills a function. And it does this no matter if the OS is current or old.

It might very well be so. But the problem is that to get any positive use out of the inclusion of a general purpose computing operating system on an instrument, you have to connect it to a network (unless you want to play sneakernet, ofc.) and then the scope becomes part of the largest machine on earth, the Internet. The Internet does not look fondly on old unmaintained OSes, but uses them for evil things.

It is enough that the share you're dumping your data on is also browsable by Mike in Marketing, who plays illegal poker on his company laptop, for bad things to happen.

This, of course, also applies to any embedded system. Which is because the "S" in "IOT" stands for security.

[tooki]

Change yes. But PCs aren't just going to disappear. Windows isn't just going to disappear.

Windows is basically becoming "free" for home users and Microsoft is working hard to add stuff that makes Linux users feel at home. It's not going anywhere soon.

Yep. And it’s not as though Linux ever posed a threat to Windows on the desktop, especially at home. The percentage of home users running Linux as their desktop OS is vanishingly small. (EEVblog being a community of engineers and geeks is not a representative sample, and even here, Windows is undoubtedly the dominant home OS.)

The only true threats to Windows at home are macOS and iOS/iPadOS. (And to a much lesser extent, chromebooks, which are distanced enough from their Linux kernel as to not really count as Linux.)

[joeqsmith]

I would assume the companies have setup each employee with their own personal lab consisting of this high end Windows based test equipment we are talking about.  That, or these people don't really need it.   Let's assume they don't as I have not seen any indication there was a boom in the high end T&M market.   Perhaps this group has made careers based on one OS in particular.  It makes sense they would be upset thinking it could all go away overnight, just like Yahoo groups.   

...
I used to be on several thriving groups and was a moderator on one, they worked well and were very popular. Then Yahoo decided their platform looked dated and revamped everything, in the process completely ruining groups. The new design was so buggy it was unusable and members abandoned them almost overnight fleeing to other platforms. Despite outrage in the community Yahoo steadfastly refused to roll back the changes. Screw Yahoo, they did it to themselves.

There may be some very small group of people who actually need the high end equipment.  With Teledyne rebranding low end products to stay in business, that group must be basically zero.   

[joeqsmith]

Change yes. But PCs aren't just going to disappear. Windows isn't just going to disappear.

Windows is basically becoming "free" for home users and Microsoft is working hard to add stuff that makes Linux users feel at home. It's not going anywhere soon.

Nothing is free.  Guessing the data they collect has value.  You see little value in your own personal data so for you it's free.   

I wonder if we will continue to see more headless high end the test equipment.  As we remove the UI, is there any advantage to Windows?

...
But the problem is that to get any positive use out of the inclusion of a general purpose computing operating system on an instrument, you have to connect it to a network (unless you want to play sneakernet, ofc.) and then the scope becomes part of the largest machine on earth, the Internet.
..

Why do you feel that placing the equipment on a network automatically makes it part of the Internet?