You are going to have your 64Xi repaired then?
Yes, because aside from it being a great scope it's still pretty valuable (used ones still sell somewhere between $3500 and $4000, and the ones with the MSO option for even more). And even if I have it repaired by LeCroy this shouldn't cost me more than say $1200 or so (just a guess, wouldn't be surprised if its a lot lower).
I am surprised mine had not had any more problems after I had it apart.
I vaguely remember you mentioned that yours had been in repair before, so maybe that makes a difference. The connector problem is mostly an manufacturing/assembly issue (the tight bolts leave no room for the PCB to expand when warming up), and when a scope is sent in for repair this should be mitigated by using nylon spacers and less torque. The upgraded fans also help to keep temperatures low (although this makes the scope a bit louder).
How's the touchscreen of your scope doing? The protective sheet on it tends to delaminate after a few years, but that's not too difficult to fix.
The 64Xi's plastic case has a few chips in the corners and the internal chassis does flex a bit. On the bright side, at least the knobs don't fall off anymore!
Hey, that's a LeCroy trademark! It ain't no LeCroy if you don't leave behind a trail of knobs when moving it!
![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xwink.gif.pagespeed.ic.cldandycH0.png)
You're right with the chassis, but on mine (which is one of the early models, don't know if they changed it on later models) the press-in nuts that are pressed into the alloy chassis are pressed in from the outside, which means that the bolts pull the nut out of the chassis
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xfacepalm.gif.pagespeed.ic.EBDwh1hCfo.png)
Thankfully that's easy to fix as the nuts can just be taken out and pressed in from the other side, but still that's pretty stupid.
The CPU speed has not been a problem for me but adding the RAM helped it out a lot.
Yes, RAM makes some difference, but when I upgraded mine from the standard 1.3GHz Celeron-M (400MHz FSB, 512k cache) to a Pentium-M 1.8GHz with 533MHz(?) FSB and 2M cache the scope became noticably faster. Not that it was slow before, but the slighly sluggish feel when changing settings is gone, plus FFT and math are noticably faster (it also increases the performance of WaveScan). The main benefit will be the bigger L2 cache (LeCroy X-Stream does all calculations in the CPU's L2 cache due to its speed). It now feels as snappy as most embedded scopes.
Considering that these CPUs now go for a few bucks it's an upgrade worth doing. The other benefit is that unlike the Celeron-M the Pentium-M supports SpeedStep powermanagement, which keeps CPU temps lower than for the Celeron.
I have never seen the auto calibration problem in auto mode, only normal.
What auto mode do you mean? There's a setting that allows you to disable automatic calibration, is it this one?
It doesn't always do it. I made a short video using the 64Xi to better help explain. It works the same with the 8500A. I bring it up from a cold start. You can see it triggers and displays just fine the first few times. Then after a while it gets into this mode. I show this part in actual time so you can see how long I am letting it sit for. As soon as it gets that last transient at the end of the video, it starts the cal and losses the next transient. All that dead time with nothing to do but autocal but instead it waits for the signal, then runs the cal.
I see. Do you have Automatic Calibration enabled or disabled? It shouldn't do that if its disabled unless there's a larger temperature change.
I assume it was done this way for a reason. For me, loosing the data I want to see is more important than any gains they think they gained by making it work this
The reason for this auto cal functionality is to make sure the scope maintains its specs in the whole operating range and not just at the temperature it was calibrated at (as it is the case with scopes from other manufacturers). Unfortunately on the older X-Stream scopes auto-cal got a bit overzealous, but if you disable it then it should stop calibrating unless the temperature changes significantly.
Also, make sure you have the latest firmware installed, as there were some improvements re. calibration as well.