please dont purchase PC controlled test equipment

[2N3055]

Yes, we did.  While we also have equipment using industrial pc hardware like you describe, this unit was some oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.  We even sent it out to a repair shop that claimed they could repair it (they have done many other repairs for us) and they couldn't resolve it either.  I'm sure from a technical pov it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with some generic pc system as the actual IO is run by PLC's in the cabinet, but apparently the manufacturer did not have any generic software that would interface with the PLC system as that software was all in the ROM.  So their solution was $40K+ to replace everything when the saw went for around $60K on the used market.

Well that's annoying. It illustrates the issue with equipment that should last many decades relying on computer technology that becomes obsolete after just a few years.

First of all, what manufacturer is claiming a CNC machine will last 25 years? Or a scope?.
They are very good if they provide any support more than 7 years after it was stopped being produced.

This is a good example how it would be better if they made a machine run on off the shelf DELL PC for which you could find replacement. But they used custom MB, so only course of action is that manufacturer should stock hundreds of spare motherboards for repair of machines in supported period..  Which they don't..

As I said, people can like or not PC based T&M equipment based on preferences or use case, but reparability is actually slightly better than for fully custom hardware.

[precaud]

What exactly is the issue?
I still have almost every computer I have ever bought, starting in the early 80's with HP 9845B and Z-80 CP/M-based Eagle IIE's.
They ALL still work fine.
Most have never had any maintenance or repair, other than cleaning (it's dusty here) or replacing disk drives.
Statistically, that makes them more reliable than the standalone equipment being suggested by the OP.

[m k]

Wrong part have had too many working hours.

[james_s]

First of all, what manufacturer is claiming a CNC machine will last 25 years? Or a scope?.
They are very good if they provide any support more than 7 years after it was stopped being produced.

I don't know what the manufacture claims, but these machines cost hundreds of thousands of dollars new, the latest one is my friend's shop was just over $1M, they HAVE to last a long time. On average I think they have retired/sold/scrapped machines when they are around 20 years old, you run it until the ways, ballscrews, spindle, etc are worn out and the tolerance drops below what is acceptable, then sometimes you shift it to jobs that require less tolerance or sell it to somebody else doing lower tolerance jobs and it keeps running. A 10 year old machine can easily be worth $50k-$100k, it is well worth keeping them going. They still have a few much, much older machines in use but mostly manual stuff. It's annoying if you have to scrap an expensive machine that is not worn out because the controller has failed.

[nctnico]

Yes, we did.  While we also have equipment using industrial pc hardware like you describe, this unit was some oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.  We even sent it out to a repair shop that claimed they could repair it (they have done many other repairs for us) and they couldn't resolve it either.  I'm sure from a technical pov it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with some generic pc system as the actual IO is run by PLC's in the cabinet, but apparently the manufacturer did not have any generic software that would interface with the PLC system as that software was all in the ROM.  So their solution was $40K+ to replace everything when the saw went for around $60K on the used market.

Well that's annoying. It illustrates the issue with equipment that should last many decades relying on computer technology that becomes obsolete after just a few years.

First of all, what manufacturer is claiming a CNC machine will last 25 years? Or a scope?.
They are very good if they provide any support more than 7 years after it was stopped being produced.

AFAIK pick & place machines for electronics assembly see very long service lifes. From what I've read & heard it is not out of the ordinary to have machines serviced/refurbished that are 20+ years old.

[graybeard]

Headline : please don't purchase PC controlled test equipment
I mean of course ONLY controllable by pc

It is really driving me nuts, as a collector of funny old test equipment,
every time some stuff is controlled only by a pc, and a bit old,
it is impossible to get software, drivers, support
and operating systems changed 4 versions since...

this means such stuff (pc only control equipment)
come with a very short expected lifetime,
some of it is even just as expensive as real standalone equipment with remote capabilities,
this means in many years when the remote features are no more supported
you still have a working standalone unit, and not trash.

my latest equipment score is a good example :
https://youtu.be/93_Zg-mKWks

I agree.  I have always refused to buy equipment that will not work in a stand-alone mode, both for my home lab, and at work.
If I want remote capability the equipment must have either a IEEE488 or serial port.   For home eithernet connections work great.  At work I am not allowed to connect anything to a network or USB port that is not supplied by IT, so only IEEE488 and serial are acceptable.

[nigelwright7557]

Maybe the answer is to keep the old pc with its version of Windows ?

I sell software and you would be gobsmacked how many people ask if it will work with Windows XP.

[tautech]

If I want remote capability the equipment must have either a IEEE488 or serial port.   For home eithernet connections work great.  At work I am not allowed to connect anything to a network or USB port that is not supplied by IT, so only IEEE488 and serial are acceptable.

Really, in this day and age your work IT are so behind the times ? 

Me thinks you need drop them a link to SDS6000L and watch them go into a spin. 

[m k]

Device doesn't matter.
With USB or RJ45 nobody can really say what happens behind the scenes.
Other issue is what IT knows but that's their headache and no salary breaks for others.

For machine years,
maybe somebody should ask Heidelberg how long their GTO 46 or "Windmill" will last.

I think Tiegel is incredible machine.
You just can't believe it before you see it operating.

[Wolfgang]

Disagree.

The problem is not that a piece of equipment is only controllable by a PC, the problem occurs when this control is not done in a standard way like SCPI and special, soon outdated software is used. Then I agree, never buy this.

On the other hand, a lot of stuff used in automation will never be operated by hand once the programming is done. This means you dont need a screen, a keyboard, switches, ... all that stuff. What I do is using standard lab equipment (DMMs, generators, scopes, whatnot) during the design phase, and then I make special appliances that are SCPI controlled to do the automated stuff. With an Arduino its possible to make quite smart stuff that costs only a fraction of all the fancy gear with GUIs. That works great and its fun.

regards
  Wolfgang

[alm]

The problem is not that a piece of equipment is only controllable by a PC, the problem occurs when this control is not done in a standard way like SCPI and special, soon outdated software is used. Then I agree, never buy this.

How many commercially available instruments that rely on PC control use SCPI for communication? I doubt you'll find many. Can you name a PC-controlled oscilloscope that talks SCPI to the host PC over a standard protocol like USBTMC? Or a logic analyzer? Or a function generator? Some VXI cards maybe?

On the other hand, a lot of stuff used in automation will never be operated by hand once the programming is done. This means you dont need a screen, a keyboard, switches, ... all that stuff. What I do is using standard lab equipment (DMMs, generators, scopes, whatnot) during the design phase, and then I make special appliances that are SCPI controlled to do the automated stuff. With an Arduino its possible to make quite smart stuff that costs only a fraction of all the fancy gear with GUIs. That works great and its fun.

HP used to offer some equipment without front panel to be used only by GPIB control. It would not surprise me if that is still possible. But in general I highly doubt that removing the front panel is going to have that much impact on the BOM costs for anything but a very basic device like a simple bench power supply. How much of your saving is because the lack of front panel, and how much is because it's designed for a single purpose, less margins, less overhead, less compliance testing, etc? Modern front panels are using fewer mechanical switches and no expensive multi-turn pots, so if anything front panels are getting cheaper.

If you compare say an NI offering for a USB/PXI card to a bench instrument, then I doubt you'll be much cheaper. And good luck using it when NI stops supporting the device for newer OS versions or CPU architectures (x86 -> ARM). Their main advantage is density in a commercial production environment.

[jasonRF]

Headline : please don't purchase PC controlled test equipment
I mean of course ONLY controllable by pc

It is really driving me nuts, as a collector of funny old test equipment,
every time some stuff is controlled only by a pc, and a bit old,
it is impossible to get software, drivers, support
and operating systems changed 4 versions since...

this means such stuff (pc only control equipment)
come with a very short expected lifetime,
some of it is even just as expensive as real standalone equipment with remote capabilities,
this means in many years when the remote features are no more supported
you still have a working standalone unit, and not trash.

I believe everyone should buy the equipment that is best suited for their needs.  For some people and some needs that will include equipment with PC-only control, while for others it will not. 

Not long ago I had to be on travel and of course brought my laptop as always.  But I also wanted to bring a scope and packed a USB model with PC-only control.  It took virtually no space and weighed nothing.  Had I instead tried to bring a bench scope, I would have had to pack it to survive commercial air travel, and since I did not have room in my carry-on bag would have had to check a bag which would have meant an extra fee.  Are you really saying that someone who must travel like this often should never buy a usb scope, and instead lug around clunky bench scope and pay an extra baggage fee on many flights just so you can pick up the old bench scope in 20 years and make it work?  And even if the usb scope is junk sooner than the bench scope (not clear if you are traveling with it all the time), how many usb scopes can you throw out before you have generated the same amount of trash as one bench scope? 

jason

[JPortici]

Yes, we did.  While we also have equipment using industrial pc hardware like you describe, this unit was some oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.  We even sent it out to a repair shop that claimed they could repair it (they have done many other repairs for us) and they couldn't resolve it either.  I'm sure from a technical pov it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with some generic pc system as the actual IO is run by PLC's in the cabinet, but apparently the manufacturer did not have any generic software that would interface with the PLC system as that software was all in the ROM.  So their solution was $40K+ to replace everything when the saw went for around $60K on the used market.

Well that's annoying. It illustrates the issue with equipment that should last many decades relying on computer technology that becomes obsolete after just a few years.

First of all, what manufacturer is claiming a CNC machine will last 25 years? Or a scope?.
They are very good if they provide any support more than 7 years after it was stopped being produced.

This is a good example how it would be better if they made a machine run on off the shelf DELL PC for which you could find replacement. But they used custom MB, so only course of action is that manufacturer should stock hundreds of spare motherboards for repair of machines in supported period..  Which they don't..

As I said, people can like or not PC based T&M equipment based on preferences or use case, but reparability is actually slightly better than for fully custom hardware.

It's not uncommon at all. Industrial machinery can cost tens to hundreds of thousands and is build to a certain degree of quality. Ten years ago when i dabbled in internships in that area it was no strange to find machinery with windows 3.11 PCs controlling them. The idea of scrapping a perfectly good (and costly) machine because the computer is outdated is ridiculous, but that means that you have to be able to keep the old pc running

[Wolfgang]

Disagree again.

Almost all "renowned" manufacturers offer SCPI-enabled instruments.

For DMMs: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix, ...
For Scopes: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix, LeCroy, ...
For Signal Generators: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix,  ...

list may be continued. All of them now offer remote-only instruments. The market is clearly automated testing
in a factory environment, and this market is huge. Here you need the max of test functionality in a cramped space. All this PXI stuff is just doing that.

[horo]

Headline : please don't purchase PC controlled test equipment
I mean of course ONLY controllable by pc

It is really driving me nuts, as a collector of funny old test equipment,
every time some stuff is controlled only by a pc, and a bit old,
it is impossible to get software, drivers, support
and operating systems changed 4 versions since...

this means such stuff (pc only control equipment)
come with a very short expected lifetime,
some of it is even just as expensive as real standalone equipment with remote capabilities,
this means in many years when the remote features are no more supported
you still have a working standalone unit, and not trash.

Here, open source (OS), open firmware (OF) together with open schematics (OSch) would give your devices an eternal life.
One example I maintain is the >10 year old Hantek6022 DSO -> OpenHantek6022 (OS, OF, OSch).
Other examples are tinySA (OS, OF) and NanoVNA (OS, OF, OSch).
And if you are willing to give up Windows in your lab, then you can stop the artificial software rot, Linux supports old parallel port devices as well as historical GPIB and SCSI interfaces right out of the box.

[Berni]

There is a time and place for everything.

All reasonably modern reputable test gear supports SCPI without the need for special software. The PC control only versions of test gear is simply the same instrument with the front panel ripped away. Useful for packing as much gear as possible in an industrial test system rack.

The issue comes with gear that was originally designed to ONLY be PC controllable. Those are often optimized to offload as much of the work to the PC as possible, so that the hardware could be cheaper. This is impossible to do without having proprietary PC side software. For example there are realtime spectrum analyzers that are just a calibrated SDR in a box, then the PC uses there massive amount of processing power to actually FFT that very quickly.

Yeah i don't necessarily like this way of doing things, but it does make things more portable for people that need it. However if the piece of PC controlled gear is cheap it doesn't really matter if you have to throw it away once the software support is gone. Like for example i am a fan of those little USB logic analyzers. They are little dumb boxes that just barf the state of digital pins into the USB port and let the PC actually take care of any processing or storage. This makes the really cheep and tiny. At the same time the software is nicer to use with a mouse compared to a old huge boatanchor logic analyzer. It takes up very little space on your bench...etc. The cheap SDRs can also be very capable modulation analysis equipment.

So there are cases where a PC controlled instrument is a good idea.

[DavidKo]

The simple answer is cost.

In past buying a HPIB (GPIB) interface was not cheap. To sold single instrument which needed PC to operate to someone with its own PC was cheaper than pushing him to buy instrument (with PC inside), GPIB interface, cable etc. Now the situation is opposite and SW solutions tends to be cheaper than HW solutions (like software defined radio, which can substitute more devices at once) and powerful computers are cheap. Cheaper solutions wins for the buyer, since he need to pay price now, not after selling the device second hand.

[TomKatt]

It's not uncommon at all. Industrial machinery can cost tens to hundreds of thousands and is build to a certain degree of quality. Ten years ago when i dabbled in internships in that area it was no strange to find machinery with windows 3.11 PCs controlling them. The idea of scrapping a perfectly good (and costly) machine because the computer is outdated is ridiculous, but that means that you have to be able to keep the old pc running

LOL - We have a CNC running on Windows NT right now 

We have spares for most of the pc controller parts, but some items like ISA controller boards can be difficult to source.

And it is a real shame to basically scrap the machine because it's brain dead.  I still find it hard to believe that it can be cheaper to replace the entire machine rather than simply upgrade the controller, but in virtually every case we've encountered that's how it works out.  I'm sure given some time and resources we could refurb those things in-house, but in a commercial manufacturing environment, time is money and also floor space real estate is limited (these are large machines)...  It simply isn't feasible to revamp them ourselves.

I don't think there is really a good answer - pc control does offer the most flexiblity and bad as it is it's still easier to deal with than proprietary PLC controllers.  I'm sure someone must be refurbing these things on the used market, but we purchase used equipment frequently and I've rarely seen one that has been refurbed with new controllers.

[Berni]

Yeah CNC machines are often run by computers from the stone age.

I am guessing the reason they don't get upgraded is logistical difficulties of having the space for it and hauling it around. If it is in a factory it needs to be worked on in place, being in the way. If someone else wants to fix one up and sell it then they need to haul the massive metal behemoth over to there place, fix it up, then haul it to the costumer. Also when they get the machine, they might not have any idea of the condition of the mechanical parts. It is possible the ways,bearings,ballscrews..etc are worn to hell and have heaps of slop, maybe the machine had a bad crash in its history that bent stuff etc.. So it might not just need new electronics but also some special precision mechanical parts that are also near unobtainable by now too. Even then companies will want someone to call up when the machine breaks, so the guy who refurbishes these things would also have to be the one fixing them. Since they are refurbs every machine would be slightly different so maintenance could get more complicated to provide, especially when the company expects to have the machine back up and running ASAP.

Id guess the dicking around is not worth for companies that just want a reliable machine that will pump out parts all day to make money. After a while the parts pay off the cost of the machine anyway. If it breaks down 30 years later they figure it made plenty of profit anyway, it might be worn to hell by now, so time for a new machine.

Still an excellent project to take on for getting a cheap CNC into the home shop. That is if you have the space for one and find a machine small enough (They are often too massive for what you need). That way the large amount of labor of fixing it up and figuring out how to do it is part of the fun rather than the cost.

[TomKatt]

Even then companies will want someone to call up when the machine breaks, so the guy who refurbishes these things would also have to be the one fixing them. Since they are refurbs every machine would be slightly different so maintenance could get more complicated to provide, especially when the company expects to have the machine back up and running ASAP.

I know that at least for us, support is rated nearly equally to a machine's ability / features.  Down time costs a lot of money.  So unless a refurbished machine comes with support (including a stocked replacement parts supply), we're not likely to purchase it.  I suspect that many businesses operate with similar requirements.

[zrq]

Isn't a PC based embedded controller runing some Windows usually easier to service and replace than a customized digital board running some obscure long-dead RTOS? There isn't much one can do if such customized thing break for example because of storage card corruption.

At least one can always do the disk imaging in a relatively standard way and in case some software break, you know how to load the exe to IDA or GHIDRA. And it will be the better documented x86 rather than PPC or  some weird shit.

[m k]

Easier is relative, one is hobbying and other one is starving.

[pdenisowski]

Disagree again.

Almost all "renowned" manufacturers offer SCPI-enabled instruments.

For DMMs: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix, ...
For Scopes: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix, LeCroy, ...
For Signal Generators: Keysight/HP/Agilent, Rohde&Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Keithley, Tektronix,  ...

Yes - almost all of our instruments are controllable via SCPI, and many of them have remote GUI interfaces that only require a web browser or a standard VNC / RDP client. 

I've worked for test and measurement equipment manufacturers for over 25 years, and the trend has very definitely been to move away from "proprietary" solutions for controlling instruments remotely.  In the old days, working as a field applications engineer in T&M meant having dozens of programs installed on your laptop for all the products you supported.  There was nothing quite like being on site and finding out that you didn't have the right software package to talk to an instrument.

That said, there are a lot of both "professional" and "hobbyist" instruments that come with a proprietary remote control software package, but I agree strongly with the OP that these should not be the ONLY way to communicate with or use a modern test and measurement instrument.

[zrq]

Really liked the official built-in VNC server of many recent R&S gears  .
We are also using R&S SGMA series compact generators without front panel, which works nicely for us.

[JPortici]

Isn't a PC based embedded controller runing some Windows usually easier to service and replace than a customized digital board running some obscure long-dead RTOS? There isn't much one can do if such customized thing break for example because of storage card corruption.

At least one can always do the disk imaging in a relatively standard way and in case some software break, you know how to load the exe to IDA or GHIDRA. And it will be the better documented x86 rather than PPC or  some weird shit.

It then depends on what the custom application requires, and what the custom driver for the custom hardware card requires.
It maybe easier to reverse engineer but it still will cost a lot in term of time/money