Agilent E5810 repair

[Samogon]

Ok null modem cable appears to be working i see RS232 led activity when type in the putty, but no response.
Nothing displayed in the terminal on boot time.

[TheSteve]

Picked up a "parts only" E5810A for $55.00 the other day. Sometimes it would boot fine, sometimes it would hang with the power and fault LED's on. I was able to update it to the newest firmware no problem. I opened it up and checked the power supply. It had 3.3 and 5 volts but had horrible ripple on both. I swapped all of the output capacitors on the power supply and the ripple is gone - it boots properly all the time now. The removed caps test just fine in terms of capacity and ESR and there was no sign of any leakage, yet they clearly had problems.

I did look for debug output on the serial port and never see anything - does it need to be enabled and does anyone know how to do that?

edit - just noticed there is a service note describing my exact issue - http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/E5810A-02.pdf

[HighVoltage]

edit - just noticed there is a service note describing my exact issue

How funny:
Service Solution/Action:
Return the defective E5810A to nearest service centre to have the unit exchanged.


You got lucky again with a simple repair, congratulations
Usually the ESR should show some increase in the old caps.

[Tony_G]

Picked up a "parts only" E5810A for $55.00 the other day.

You'll have to let me know if you can have your E5810A on the bus and another device as the system controller - In my setup I can't print from my 8563E as it needs to take control of the bus to do that, or turn my 8714C into the system controller because my E5810A refuses to give up as the system controller. If I turn it off then everything works as expected.

TonyG

[TheSteve]

I doubt mine will behave any differently. I have quite a few devices with GPIB but no scenarios I can think of where the device would need to be the system controller. Are you also trying to print with your 8714C? I grab screen shots from my 8714C via its built in web server.

[Tony_G]

Mostly the same here but now that I have some plotters, I'd like to get the grabbing of 'system controller' working...

[plesa]

I just tried on non faulty unit and there is no debug output.
Also there is difference between units.
The newer unit has power resistor mounted on chassis and connected between PSU and boards.

[TheSteve]

My unit is from 2008 I do believe, there is no power resistor mounted to the board. I guess debug output isn't super important as new caps fixed it but it would have been nice to try swapping between flash images etc.

[iouzzr]

A gender changer may not be enough. If the connector is male, then you may well need a null modem cable with RX and TX reversed.

Yes, you needs null modem or cross the wires.
On this interface is boot log where you can select to boot second image (for recovery probably?).
I have one board which first image does not boot ( no message on LCD) and when I try to boot second image it boot up correctly but is unable to lease IP.
Maybe it is similar to your problem.

For me, the first image stuck at searching for DHCP server, trying to update from .02 to .10 does not fix.
Thanks for the second image idea, I do not use RS232 to choose it, I just unplug power during the firmware update, successfully rolled back to .01, which I think is the secondary backup image.
However, this still does not fix stuck at searching DHCP issue. I then tried my last attempt, update from .01 to .03, holy shit, the DCHP works!!!
Hopes this can help anyone who has the same issue like me.
 

[branadic]

Just my two cent on E5810A.
I yesterday received a used unit and played with it today.
It had firmware version A.01.02 installed, so a very early version. I then tried implementing an FTP server under windows 10, but unfortunately the unit declined the update with the message "Firmware updated not successful". 
I then implemented an FTP server on my Pi following the instructions given here. Unfortunately, the unit still declined updating the firmware to the latest version, although I was able to access the firmware file via FileZilla. I finally checked the "Current Configuration of E5810 LAN/GPIB Gateway" and saw that "I/O Timeout  (sec)" was set to "0". So I ended up restoring the factory settings and afterwards the firmware update worked straight away. It now runs A.01.10 and everyone is very happy

-branadic-

[garrettm]

I was unable to get my E5810A to update using ftp.keysight.com or kaz911's FTP server. Instead, I managed to get my unit updated using a "local" FTP server on a Windows 10 laptop using ftpdmin.

Procedure:

1) Connect the E5810A to a router/switch with DHCP capability or use a crossover cable to connect it to a PC with an Ethernet port.
  1.1) The E5810A's IPv4 address is shown on the front panel LCD. Default for my unit was 169.254.58.10 when a DHCP server was absent.
  1.2) If connecting directly, configure your PC with an IPv4 address in the same network as the E5810A (e.g., 169.254.58.11).

2) Connect to the E5810A using a web browser (using its IPv4 address as the URL) and reset the unit back to factory defaults.

3) Download the attached e5810.zip file and extract it to your C drive. E.g., C:/e5810.
  3.1) Open Windows command prompt (Winkey+R and type cmd). Navigate to the e5810 directory: cd C:/ cd e5810
  3.2) Disable all networking cards except for the one needed to connect to the E8510A. !!! This is to guarantee the FTP server will use the correct IPv4 address and NIC !!!
  3.3) Run ftpdmin.exe inside the opened command prompt window.
  3.4) TEMPORARILY disable Windows firewall. !!! THIS MUST BE DONE TO ALLOW ACCESS TO THE FTP SERVER !!!

At this point the FTP server should be accessible from the E5810A or another PC on the network. NOTE: Only the contents of the folder containing ftpdmin.exe are accessible over FTP.

4) Inside a browser, go to 169.254.58.10/html/update_firmware.html and replace "ftp.agilent.com" with the local FTP server's IPv4 address (if you don't know, its shown in the command prompt window where ftpdmin.exe was ran from).
  4.1) Click "Update Firmware"and watch the CMD window containing the FTP server: It should show the E5810A connecting and copying the FW.
  4.2) After the E5810A reboots, connect to it using a browser and check the FW version is now A.01.10 and re-configure your E5810A's settings.
  4.3) Close the CMD window and re-enable Windows Firewall and delete the e5810 folder.

NOTES:
The simple FTP server was download from: https://github.com/ngrcld/FtpdminMod
The E8510A A.01.10 FW was obtained from xdevs.com: https://xdevs.com/guide/e5810a/