Just asked some guys here what their LeCroy problems were:
remind you that scopes here are turned on at 7,30 and turned off (if turned off) at 17.00 so 10 hours a day, year in year out and average temperature in the office is 28oC .
6000 series: too slow , falling asleep esp. with some math calculations. Some motherboard issues and AD issues (replaced by LeCroy on site). But to be honest relatively not that many issues.
Yes, the WR6k (non-A) was a bit laggy, especially with early software versions. Part of it was due to the slow P4 Celeron LeCroy gave these scopes. Upgrading the scopes to Windows XP and the related X-Stream software made this a lot better, though.
And it's lag is really nothing compared with the slowness of comepting Windows scopes of that time.
I'm not aware of any exceptional failure rate of the mainboards, but like any complex device stuff occasionally fails.
Then came the disaster that made them call it LeCrap:
WR-Xi44 series: all that were once delivered (about 40 or so) are now dead and scrapped, oldest survived 5 years with 1 repair that was the best one.
Each one failed at least once in two years costing between €1000-2500 for repair. No courtesy discount nothing.
Main cause: bad internal connectors/connections, between inputboard and mainboard, low budget china motherboard with bad ram simm connectors. Caused a lot of pc boot issues.
Yes, the early WR(M)Xs and WS(M)Xi that were made by a contractor in Malaysia were truly very poor in terms of build quality (not performance, though). Aside from various mechanical issues (poor front bezel paint, delaminating screen protector sheet, poor quality press-in nuts in internal chassis, weak carrying handle that breaks off) it suffered from thermal stress induced connector failure of the Hosiden connectors between front end and acquisition board (not the connectors to the mainboard, which were connected to the acquisition board via ribbon cables; also, the mainboard is not some cheap China crap but an industrial mainboard, RAM made by PNY). LeCroy later moved the production to the US which alleviated the problems. The Malaysia made scopes were fixed during repair (which included a fan upgrade and a stronger black handle).
So yes, I can understand the pain. What I can't understand however is how they can supposedly spend a couple of grands on repairs within two years on scopes that are covered by three year manufacturer warranty. And even beyond that, buying additional warranty would have cost a lot less than any repair.
But thanks for asking, it's always interesting to hear the background, and in case of the WRXi I can certainly understand the disappointment (at least to a certain degree).
The ones they have now HDO 6000 series are nice, the 4000 not that good.
What's the problem with them?
Personally most of them would prefer Keysight: much faster.
You think so?
Agilent's competitor to the WaveRunner 6000 (which came out in 2001/2002) was the Infiniium 54800, with the 1GHz 54832B the fastest variant that was still somewhat within the WR's price bracket. So let's see:
- the WR6100 (the 1GHz variant) offers 10GSa/s (5Gsa/s in quad channel mode), up to 24Mpts (12Mpts/ch) memory, a max waveform update rate of >100k wfms/s, and a 2GHz P4 Celeron CPU running Windows 2000.
- Agilent's 1Ghz 54832B offers 4GSa/s (2Gsa/s half-channel), up to 16Mpts memory (up to 8M/ch), a max waveform update rate of 7800 waveforms/s, and a slow Pentium3 866MHz processor running Windows98.
There also were a 1.5GHz and a 2.25Ghz variant (54845B, 54846B), which offered 8Gsa/s (4GSa/s quad channel), a whooping 64kpts (32k per channel) of sample memory, and a max waveform update rate of lowly 1700 waveforms/s.
If that sounds slow, I can tell you it is. Pretty much anything that is slow on a WR6k takes literally forever on a 54800 Series scope, and that provided the Agilent does even have that functionality available. The scopes were slow, not because of the weak CPU but because of the poor architecture using Agilent's own ASICs. Besides, these early Infiniiums weren't the most reliable scopes. We send them back via truck load, literally, because the early versions were horribly unstable, and even later ones often died because of the crap mainboard (not even industrial, it's a cheap-ass FIC consumer mainboard) and because of ADC and interface board failures.
Let's see about that that poorly build WaveRunner (M)Xi, which came out in 2005. Agilent's counterpart of that time was the Infiniium 54830D: 600MHz or 1GHz, up to 4GSa/s, 4MB (2MB/ch) standard, up to 128MB (64MB/ch) optional. The CPU was now a 1GHz Pentium3 (in 2005!) running WindowsXP, the max waveform update rate was 8800 wfms/s. The WR(M)Xi offered up to 2Ghz at 10Gsa/s (5Gsa/s quad channel), 25Mpts (12.5Mpts/ch) memory, and a max waveform rate of 1.25M waveforms/s. The pretty much only thing the Agilent had going for it is the large optional sample memory. It didn't help the scope's performance, which was still sluggish.
And that's not even touching all the other differences, i.e. available software options, the screens (8.4" SVGA and 10.2" SVGA touch vs 8.4" VGA), the UI (touch vs mouse operated) and so on.
If you really believe that Agilent scopes were any faster then I'm sorry but you're deluding yourself. They do make the fastest entry-level/lower mid-range scopes, but it took a very long time until Agilent did a Windows scope right (DSO9kA), and even today their Windows scopes are pretty slow compared with other alternatives (a few thousand waveforms/s vs 1M wfms/s with pretty much any LeCroy Windows scope). That doesn't make them bad scopes, but they're really slow.