Gould Ultima / Nicolet Accura DSO software needed.

[shakalnokturn]

I'll need to get really lucky on this one...

I have a Pentium PC based oscilloscope, Gould Ultima 500, 4 channel 500MHz, 500M to 2GS/s, circa 2000.
The only thing... is it is currently a big doorstop, the HDD has failed.

As far as I know it should run MS Windows 200 pro, I may be able to get my hands on that but all the specific software is a bigger problem.

The ideal would be a drive image from a working Ultima 500, however I'll take any information, links, partition structure or individual software files from the Ultima 500, Accura 100, Accura 50 oscilloscopes.

My doorstop thanks you!

[shakalnokturn]

Bumping this back up, I'm still looking for the software or a disk image...

[PushUp]

I had a HDD failure in the past with +25 of virtual images, which I didn't want to redo once again. Therefore I looked for an identical model on ebay. I was lucky to find three of them in used conditions, of which one was out of the same production month. Therefore I only needed to swap the circuit board on the backside and anything was fine, being able to secure the files on different HDDs in the end, because the read head was fine...

You have to be more precise as far as the HDD failure is concerned. Is it dead, does it make noise, which connectors, which model, have you already searched for a used one. Are you able to connect it to an external power supply, in order to clone it with your pc and rescue the content with different types of software such as "MiniToolPartitionWizard" or "EaseUSDataRecoveryWizard" or "CyrstalDiskInfo" to get more information of the HDD itself?

If you find another used HDD of the exact type, but you are not able to swap the inside yourself, you will find a repair-shop, which is porbably easier, than searching for an old image as nobody has answered for such a long time...

Here is an example - just a video - no recommendation:



Toi, toi, toi! 

[shakalnokturn]

In this case the HDD (6GB-ish Seagate) has the surface physically damaged, the previous owner even removed the sealing tape for some reason (stuck heads at one point maybe...).
After attaching it to a Linux box and running hours of dd all I've been able to recover is the partition structure and fragments of data too small to be of any use. I'm screwed!

[shakalnokturn]

Bumped again.

A year later I still haven't found anything.

[le_stauss]

hey,
I can do !

I have 3 of accura 100

bye

[shakalnokturn]

Hello le_stauss,
Actually I have no idea if the software is identical on the Nicolet Accura and Gould Ultima scopes, anyway I haven't had any other offers so far so it's worth a try.
I'd be greatful if you could get an image to me some way or another. Is the HDD 6.4GB on the Accura 100?

[le_stauss]

hi,
mine are about 20 or 30gig  large.
Could you put pictures of acquisition board and others where you have the memory (scope board place).
I have already a backup of these scopes, it's near 3 or 4 gig compacted.
  See u soon

[shakalnokturn]

Here are the front-end and acquisition PCB photos.

Do you think it's worth trying with the Accura disk image?

[Kowilli]

Hello, I got the same oscilloscope cheaply but without any description.  The device boots and appears to be working, I'm trying to create an image of the hard drive.  I'll get in touch if it worked.

[Kowilli]

I have created image from the hard drive with "Drive Snapeshot".
link to Google drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/144wFaoal75S2RpnGDz6rabrkihhACc4D?usp=sharing

i will share the files during the day.

Procedure:
- Connect IDE harddisk >20GB to IDE port of any PC
- Start Snapshot -> "Restore Disk from File
- Follow instructions (source, destination, ect.)

[Kowilli]

Here are a few more pictures and tips:

[Kowilli]

I have the possibility to get a user manual, if interested you can contribute to the costs.  The provider requires 75Eur.  It's a little too expensive for me.  The operation of the device is not easy although I am an electrical engineer and have experience.

[shakalnokturn]

Thanks Kowilli for going to the trouble of imaging the HDD, I don't know yet whether I'll be able to make use of it of if I'll need the user manual but if your image allows me to get the DSO running again I'll be pleased to help you in buying the documentation.

[shakalnokturn]

Thanks to Kowilli I have a HDD image to work from.

When I bought this scope I was told that the internal LCD had stopped working and that it had been used with an external monitor until the HDD failed.


Points noticed recently:

One cracked hybrid resistor network on CH2, I assume it's for attenuation.

PCI interface board to acquisition system also containing internal LCD graphics and an additional VGA output (+GPIB?) has had the FPGA's and ASIC's reworked.

Power connector to acquisition board had previously heated at the white wires, burnt contacts had been corrected by soldering straight to the power header.

Bad contacts related to the ATI Mach64 VT4 regular VGA output. (Not sure how the 2 VGA outputs are handled, I assume one can mirror the scope screen while the other can be used for the PC.


After copying the HDD image to a spare 40GB drive I'm greeted with a German Win 2k boot screen followed by a blue screen failure that seems to indicate that the OS is missing the IDE drivers.
Going by the photos Kowilli posted we have different mainboard models mine is a Tyan S1854.

Next step is getting hold Win 2k pro setup files to see if I can get away with just a system refresh and change of language. (My German is poor...)

[shakalnokturn]

After loosing many hours on not understanding the requirements to install Win2k (which are basically having a CDROM drive or a BIOS that supports booting from USB) I have a running OS with a Franco-German flavour to it. No additional drivers were needed after all for the Win2k install.

The ATI graphics shows some artefacts seeming to confirm that it is defective as previously mentioned. I have old cards around when I get round to that.

Next big problem is that when running the Ultima.exe  DSO sotware it reports "PCI card not found".
I'm guessing that his refers to the heavily reworked card pictured in the previous post.

There are no unknown devices showing in the hardware list.
I'd expect it to be plug and play but maybe it needs an IRQ allocated in BIOS.

I'll check the voltages on the LDO regulators on the DSO interface card but by now chances of repair are starting to look low.

[shakalnokturn]

I feel as if I'm making some progress in the fault finding although once more I wont get any further without help.

I shuffled the PCI cards around a little just in case it was bad contacts: No better.
Then went to test the onboard voltages from the LDO regulators, all were good.

Because they were socketed and it's in my habit to collect data I went and dumped the socketed IC's on that board.
There's a 24LC08 for the AD9884A configuration which I still suppose is there for an independent from Windows oscilloscope display.
A PIC16C558 which is likely there for power sequencing and other housekeeping stuff.
A 93C46 for the PCI9050 low-cost PCI bus interface identification and configuration.

The daughter board not showing up in Windows or being found by the specific software, the PCI9050 was a decent suspect.
Browsing through the datasheet confirmed that the board identification should be in the 93C46, comparing the example table in the datasheet and my dump confirmed something was wrong...
The 93C46 makes no sense, I wanted to write the identification data given in the datasheet to see if it would show in Windows that way and found out after a few erase re-write attempts that my 93C46 was defective.

No 93C46, no identification on the bus no setup for mapping PCI to local address space!
So now I'd need the contents of U41 to get any further.


https://datasheetspdf.com/pdf-file/540195/PLXTechnology/PCI9050/1

[shakalnokturn]

Another small update.
Once more thanks to Kowilli's good will I have a dump of the 93C46.

Because I had no DIP8 around I programmed a SOP8 version and soldered that to the back of the PCB to try.
Still "PCI card not found"...
I went and probed the 93C46 during several PC startups, hardware detections and launching the Ultima.exe software. Absolutely no bus activity.

The PCI9050 is quite warm to the touch, the hottest IC on the card in fact.
I checked the PCI clock input and reset, nothing stuck there.
I'll try ordering a new PCI9050 they can be found for 6€ approx. If no better I'll be tempted to give up, this scope is looking like a compilation of defective parts.

[Kowilli]

There is a way to check the PCI controller.
- Download the software from https://www.broadcom.com/products/pcie-switches-bridges/software-dev-kits.

- Install it on any computer with PCI slot.
- Remove the acquisition card from the Ultima and insert it into the computer, of course not into the switched on PC.
- Start the software. The software operation is quite intuitive. The PCI controllers from PLX, then AVAGO and now Boerdcom are automatically recognized. With this software I also read the EEPROM.   
Here is the description of the software.

[shakalnokturn]

Thanks once more for your input Kowilli, you've been really helpful on this. (Did you get notification of my help towards your user manual?)

I've ordered a spare PCI9050 the scope is reassembled and back in the pile of "to do" until I receive the spare.
I'll reopen the case then and try the diagnostics software before replacing the PCI9050.
(Note to myself) should also try to remember to take a couple of thermal shots for reference.

[shakalnokturn]

Some news on this epic mess...

I've been running round in circles a little but have made some small progress:

Received the PLX9050 from China, it took me some time to unwrap it when I eventually did it was clearly a pulled and cleaned part not a NOS one, some of the corner pins had lost about 1/3 of their width.
Ebay seller is "yyen4650" just in case you want to avoid him too.

Anyway not having anything better I took a couple of thermal images of the original running then replaced the PCI9050 (it's only  TQFP-160). Results were exactly the same PCI card not found, PCI9050 temperature exact same.
No luck with the PLX monitor software either.
Not knowing if my replacement PCI9050 was actually any good I started looking for another source, while looking around I discovered that some dual RS-232 boards used the PCI9052, downloaded the datasheet to check compatibility. As far as I can tell they should be interchangeable, just the 9050 is long obsolete while the 9052 isn't.

Scrolling through the PCI9052 datasheet I came across this: "Notes: 2k-bit devices such as the FM93CS56, are not compatible. The PCI9052 does not support serial EEPROMs that do not support sequential reads (such as the FM93C46L)."
Oh, crap! That's precisely what I used a 93C46L... Bad!!!

One EEPROM replacement and programming later, the board was detected by windows and the Ultima.exe software able to run, which initialises the scope's front panel and brings up a window with the DSO traces and menus. Scope seems to be mainly working although it looks like a recalibration will be needed, I'll have to look into the cracked resistor network on CH2 too later.


Next problem is getting the integrated LCD display running again. I was hoping for a dead backlight inverter but there's no display at all neither on the LCD or on the slow acquisition PCI card's VGA output.
The integrated LCD is connected to 30 conductor FFC socket named SK2, the backlight is separate.
LCD is a 10", NEC_NL8060AC26-11, 3x6 bit parallel bus model. The video path seems to be analog to digital through an AD9884A, then through U19 (EPM7128SLC84) before the LCD.
The analog video goes through groups of AD8055 voltage feedback amplifiers, one group before the rear VGA output the other before the AD9884A.
The problem is I can't seem to find the origin of the analog video anywhere on the board, AD8055 inputs all lead to SK1 - 15 conductor FFC connector on the rear of the board so i'm assuming the VGA source is elsewhere...

The illustrations of the back of the scope on the user manual don't show any other VGA output than the one on the slow acquisition board, I have a separate VGA PCI board but that was likely dropped in by the previous owner.
There's a "Microsoft SMS Mirror Driver" in the display adapters, I'm not sure how that works having never met it before.

If another owner could confirm this it would be quite helpful. Then I'd have to try and discover the FFC pinout.

[shakalnokturn]

Looking back at Kowilli's pictures I see there's a FPC from the his AGP graphics card VGA output so I suppose that answers one question - not the pinout unfortunately.

[shakalnokturn]

The pinout for SK1 should be along these lines, a small doubt on the Sync lines, confident enough for the others.
FFC pin 1 is furthest from the rear mounting bracket.

1-   GND
2-   Red IN
3-   GND
4-   Green IN
5-   GND
6-   Blue IN
7-   GND
8-   GND
9-   GND
10- DDC-SCL
11- Vsync? (100k Pull-up, U19-54)
12- GND
13- Hsync? (100k Pull-down, 68R->U19-14)
14- DDC-SDA
15- GND

[shakalnokturn]

SK1 pinout confirmed.

I tried with a couple of AGP graphics cards, the first was a Radeon 9200SE with a convenient 15 pin header for the VGA output and DVI as a second output. That was good enough to get the internal LCD working.
There were a couple of issues: I liked the idea of having the M$ Windows desktop available on an external LCD while the internal scope screen was still active. This worked, but annoyingly on a cold start the primary display is DVI so the Ultima software won't automatically come up on the internal screen. There were also some hard to describe display glitches made worse by mouse movement bad enough to want to try another graphics card for comparison.

Second graphics card was an older still SIS6328, on the whole it works better than with the ATI one, there are still a few glitches in the display but not enough to be a real bother.
The PCI slow acquisition / VGA to digital LCD adapter board is a strange setup... During the Win 2k start-up screen the 640x480 is scaled to fit the 800 horizontally on the internal LCD while the 480 isn't stretched to fit 600 pixels, it's displayed with a large black bar at the bottom.

While I had the front panel removed to reattach the HDD (LCD must be removed to access HDD...) I dumped the configuration EPC1441 EEPROM for the front panel FPGA.


Next problem:
I've removed the frontend PCB to look at the broken resistor network on CH2, once again it looks as if I've been sold the worse of 2 or 3 scopes, the lower shielding for CH4 had previously been removed and refitted without solder. (I hope there isn't another surprise problem hiding somewhere in the coupling relays on CH4...)

The resistor network seems to be a 8 resistor ladder of which I was able to measure 5 on the cracked network, 3 values are unknown because the resistors themselves are cracked.
I also measured some values between pins on a good network removed from another channel. (Attached schematic and values/measurements.)
Is there an easy way to calculate the 3 unknown resistors (Ra, Rb, Rc) from what I have? I'm sure it's possible but my maths are a little rusty...

[shakalnokturn]

Removing pins 2, 3, 5 on the resistor network breaks all parallel connections, I was able to measure all resistors separately which worked out quicker than solving the equations for me.
Previous network sketch is wrong for one value due to a link assumed cut on the split component that wasn't.
Confirmed good enough values attached. It turns out as an almost R-2R ladder.