Turn your Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope into a 100MHz DS1102E
in [Design]
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From: Phil Hobbs on 31 Mar 2010 09:38 On 3/31/2010 12:46 AM, miso(a)sushi.com wrote: > On Mar 30, 8:03 pm, John Larkin > <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones" >> >> <altz...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a >>> 100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: >> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE >> >>> Dave. >> >> What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a >> computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to >> perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself. >> >> I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an >> option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put >> a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for >> it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into >> the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in >> flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is >> arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft. >> >> Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP >> is expensive. >> >> Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make >> it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both >> versions. >> >> I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital >> filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies >> than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a >> few more. >> >> John > > The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry > what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million > units.] > > Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two > products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the > market, and then own it. Destroying a market isn't usually a good way to make money in the long run. And it's easily possible that Rigol saves a boatload of money by having only one assembly number to design, code, build, and test. Remember that (as Dave discovered earlier) they're actually overclocking the ADCs on the 100 MHz model--so one can argue it's really a 50 MHz scope that Rigol themselves hacked into a 100 MHz one. Companies have been selling crippleware forever--the earliest example I know of was the 6 MHz IBM PC-AT. You changed the crystal and one other thing that I forget, and suddenly you had a blistering fast 8 MHz AT! (Cooler than the coolest thing ever, no?) There were similar howls of outrage over that one. The moral question is actually an interesting one, I think, and the different views seem to hinge on what people think they're buying, and whether a hardware/software combination is more like hardware (which you can hack up as you like) or software (which has a license agreement you're bound by). I don't think it's tenable to say that Rigol is dishonest when they sell two models that differ only in firmware, and the difference in the front ends. For instance, nobody thinks it's morally repugnant for Intel to sell different speed grades of microprocessor which actually come from the same wafer, right? That's because we fantasize that the slow-spec ones all failed at speed sort--which is far from true, because otherwise the available supply of the slow version would evaporate as the process improved. Still, no big outrage there--overclockers can have fun, the rest of us ignore the issue. We also don't mind Microsoft selling a 60 cent DVD full of software, because that's what we expect. (Some of us grumble, but nearly everyone is willing to pay.) It's where these hardware/software chimaeras come in that we don't have an agreed model for what is fair and what isn't. I'm not meaning to be a Dutch uncle here--I don't think I know the full answer myself--but it's an interesting question. Cheers Phil Hobbs -- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
From: Nial Stewart on 31 Mar 2010 09:44 I was going to type out a lengthy reply but you're obviously not open to reasoned debate. Would you accuse AMD of 'outright theft' for selling 4 core processors as 3 core processors? http://www.guru3d.com/news/phenom-ii-x3--enable-the-4th-core/ Nial
From: John Larkin on 31 Mar 2010 10:01 On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:02:13 -0500, "George Jefferson" <George(a)Jefferson.com> wrote: > > ><miso(a)sushi.com> wrote in message >news:0abfe648-de60-42c3-ab53-0c0bd4dc5497(a)z11g2000yqz.googlegroups.com... >> On Mar 30, 8:03 pm, John Larkin >> <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >>> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones" >>> >>> <altz...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a >>> >100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: >>> >>> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE >>> >>> >Dave. >>> >>> What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a >>> computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to >>> perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself. >>> >>> I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an >>> option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put >>> a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for >>> it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into >>> the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in >>> flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is >>> arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft. >>> >>> Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP >>> is expensive. >>> >>> Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make >>> it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both >>> versions. >>> >>> I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital >>> filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies >>> than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a >>> few more. >>> >>> John >> >> The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry >> what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million >> units.] >> >> Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two >> products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the >> market, and then own it. > >It's also very dishonest and goes to show why humanity will never make it >very far. People like Larkin are too arrogant to understand this. Do you >think people would buy their products if they knew that the only difference >between the low end and high end versions is the price? At the very least >they could have added some true functional improvement that made it >justifiable but simply changing the model number doesn't justify a 40% price >increase. People buy the standard and Pro versions of Windows knowing the only difference is a few flags. Windows consumer versions are brain-damaged to allow only a small number of network connections at a time, and cost almost nothing bundled with a PC. Windows Server removes the limit and costs about $2K. I'm sure that all sorts of expensive automotive options are just firmware these days. All sorts of products differ only in theor firmware. It's Rigol's choice how to price their products and amortize their engineering. Buying their 50 MHz scope and hacking it, and gleefully telling the world how to do it, it is essentially vandalism. Legally, it may be criminal conspiracy to use a computer to commit a crime. Jones is perfectly capable of estimating the considerable economic damage he is doing to Rigol. I suppose he hates Rigol enough that he's happy about it. If you spent years writing a book or some software, would you be happy if people copied it and distributed it for free, cutting off your rotalties? After all, copies cost almost nothing. Now can you justify charging $20 for a book or $500 for a program when it costs pennies to manufacture copies? John
From: John Larkin on 31 Mar 2010 10:08 On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:38:34 -0400, Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless(a)electrooptical.net> wrote: >On 3/31/2010 12:46 AM, miso(a)sushi.com wrote: >> On Mar 30, 8:03 pm, John Larkin >> <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >>> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones" >>> >>> <altz...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>>> For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a >>>> 100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: >>> >>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE >>> >>>> Dave. >>> >>> What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a >>> computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to >>> perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself. >>> >>> I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an >>> option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put >>> a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for >>> it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into >>> the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in >>> flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is >>> arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft. >>> >>> Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP >>> is expensive. >>> >>> Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make >>> it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both >>> versions. >>> >>> I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital >>> filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies >>> than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a >>> few more. >>> >>> John >> >> The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry >> what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million >> units.] >> >> Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two >> products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the >> market, and then own it. > > >Destroying a market isn't usually a good way to make money in the long >run. > >And it's easily possible that Rigol saves a boatload of money by having >only one assembly number to design, code, build, and test. Remember >that (as Dave discovered earlier) they're actually overclocking the ADCs >on the 100 MHz model--so one can argue it's really a 50 MHz scope that >Rigol themselves hacked into a 100 MHz one. Rigol may well be culling assembled scopes, picking the best ones to sell as the 100 MHz versions. > >Companies have been selling crippleware forever--the earliest example I >know of was the 6 MHz IBM PC-AT. You changed the crystal and one other >thing that I forget, and suddenly you had a blistering fast 8 MHz AT! >(Cooler than the coolest thing ever, no?) There were similar howls of >outrage over that one. The IBM 1401 has about a dozen cards that slowed it down, things like homing disk heads on every seek. A 1410 cost more and didn't have this stuff. > > >The moral question is actually an interesting one, I think, and the >different views seem to hinge on what people think they're buying, and >whether a hardware/software combination is more like hardware (which you >can hack up as you like) or software (which has a license agreement >you're bound by). > >I don't think it's tenable to say that Rigol is dishonest when they sell >two models that differ only in firmware, and the difference in the front >ends. For instance, nobody thinks it's morally repugnant for Intel to >sell different speed grades of microprocessor which actually come from >the same wafer, right? That's because we fantasize that the slow-spec >ones all failed at speed sort--which is far from true, because otherwise >the available supply of the slow version would evaporate as the process >improved. Still, no big outrage there--overclockers can have fun, the >rest of us ignore the issue. > >We also don't mind Microsoft selling a 60 cent DVD full of software, >because that's what we expect. (Some of us grumble, but nearly everyone >is willing to pay.) > >It's where these hardware/software chimaeras come in that we don't have >an agreed model for what is fair and what isn't. > >I'm not meaning to be a Dutch uncle here--I don't think I know the full >answer myself--but it's an interesting question. Yes. What's a fair price for IP that costs nothing to manufacture? John
From: Jan Panteltje on 31 Mar 2010 10:09
On a sunny day (Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100) it happened "David L. Jones" <altzone(a)gmail.com> wrote in <uHwsn.32654$Ht4.29971(a)newsfe20.iad>: >For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a >100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable: > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnhXfVYWYXE > >Dave. Nice work. Now to upgrade it to 1Ghz BW :-) |