Turn your Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope into a 100MHz DS1102E
in [Design]
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From: George Herold on 31 Mar 2010 10:14 On Mar 30, 8:29 pm, "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. > > -- > ================================================ > Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast:http://www.eevblog.com Excellent, I just ordered a Rigol DS1052E! The best news is that even without the mod the 50 MHz is closer to 70 MHz as is.... (just scaling your measured 5ns rise/fall time.) George H.
From: Jan Panteltje on 31 Mar 2010 10:27 On a sunny day (Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:01:39 -0700) it happened John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in <vgk6r59938gpih9moilrb7rel9spaiaqmu(a)4ax.com>: >People buy the standard and Pro versions of Windows knowing the only >difference is a few flags. Windows consumer versions are brain-damaged Yes MS is a bunch or criminals who ask hundreds of dollars for crappy software. They and Hollywood buy the system to impose laws so people who work around it are branded as criminals. In MS case Linux is the way out. >I'm sure that all sorts of expensive automotive options are just >firmware these days. All sorts of products differ only in theor >firmware. Well, a Ferrari looks different. > >It's Rigol's choice how to price their products and amortize their >engineering. Yes. >Buying their 50 MHz scope and hacking it, and gleefully >telling the world how to do it, it is essentially vandalism. No it is not, it is exposing the market mechanism. You bought the hardware, it has everything IN it, INCLUDING a varicap SO EXTRA COMPONENTS to make it inferior. Disabling something that purposely reduces performance of something YOU OWN is GOOD. Dave is taking a risk (these days with millennium copyright act and such), but is helping all those OWNERS of that hardware to a better scope. What this society no longer seems to recognise is OWNERSHIP, that goes from your property being taxed to your say over your life. He owns that scope, and the serial interface came with it. > Legally, >it may be criminal conspiracy to use a computer to commit a crime. Fixing your car may be a crime too in the future. maybe designing electronics is a crime too? F*ck off. Kudos for Dave, and f*ck that Millennium act and its puppets, May else the nukes rain. Have a nice rainy day.
From: Phil Hobbs on 31 Mar 2010 10:52 On 3/31/2010 10:08 AM, John Larkin wrote: > 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. >>>> <snip> >>> 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. Like the Intel MPU case, sure. And in that situation, one can argue that slowing down the front end to match the capabilities of the slower ADCs is a good thing for customers--you don't pay the 3 dB noise penalty for bandwidth you can't use. All for an extra 20 cents worth of parts. <snip> >> >> 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 > Same as the fair price for anything else--i.e. what a willing buyer will pay in a free market. (There are occasions when it's morally wrong to charge the 'fair' price so defined, e.g. cornering the market in food during a famine or other nasty monopoly behaviour--but it's a real stretch to put Rigol in _that_ category.) It's certainly a good lesson in customer relations, though--what was that about no good deed going unpunished? 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: Vladimir Vassilevsky on 31 Mar 2010 11:00 John Larkin wrote: > On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones" > <altzone(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. :)))))) According to your logic, CPU overclocking is a crime. Although that 20 vs 50 MHz nonsense doesn't really make any difference and probably not worth hassle. But, why varicap and that lousy circuit? Looks like Rigol analog designers don't have a clue... They are probably as unexperienced as their programmers... Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant http://www.abvolt.com
From: John Larkin on 31 Mar 2010 11:09
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:47:27 +0100, Martin Brown <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote: >John Larkin wrote: >> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones" >> <altzone(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. > >"Land of the Free" criminalises lots of things. The punters must be >ripped off by corporate excess at every turn - just look at the DMCA as >an example of how your congress critters are in hock to big business. You don't favor copyrights or legal protection for intellectual property? If you spent years writing a book or a symphony or developing a product that was mostly firmware, you wouldn't mind if people copied it and sold cheap knockoffs? There is an argument against copyrights and patents, but it would change a lot of things. > >The Sony BMG CD rootkit fiasco in 2005 was a particularly nasty example >of this with the boot on the other foot. >> >> 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. > >Even as an originator of IP I find it difficult to have much sympathy >for Rigol here when they clearly made no effort to cover their tracks in >the firmware. It would only have taken an MD5 or CRC of the serial >number XORred with a bit pattern known only to them to prevent hackers. Yes. Their mistake was making it too easy. > >If you can upgrade it by sending it a new model number then why not? > >They won't easily stop hardware mods though. Engineers tweaking >commercially available products by swapping out weak components to >improve or make them more reliable has been going on since the year dot. It looks as if hardware-hacking the varicap bandwidth limiter is legal, but doing it through the serial port may be a crime in the US. >> >> Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP >> is expensive. > >Indeed. And that is why you should not make it trivial to hack. Agreed. Hackers are amazingly inventive. > >> 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. > >However, it does make the Rigol DS1052E a very attractive proposition >for the moment. UK/Oz attitudes to hacking kit are somewhat more relaxed >than in the US. Almost all DVD players here are available in MultiRegion >hacked form and even NASA brings its DVD kit to London to be doctored. >Region locked players do not sell particularly well to UK film buffs. >> >> 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. > >You may as well patch them for 100MHz bandwidth then. Send Rigol the >price difference or whatever you think it is worth if your conscience >bothers you. I don't intend to hack any of them and I never steal IP. I hope that people won't hack my products and steal my engineering investment. And 50 MHz is a good place for a bench scope, clear of a lot of FM and TV crud. The Rigol looks great at 50 MHz, but noisy and ringy at 100. John |