Rigol MSO4000 and DS4000. Tests, bugs, firmware, questions, etc...

[hendorog]

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but there is new (to me at least) firmware out for the DS/MSO4000: 00.02.02.03.05

It displays as 00.02.02.SP3 in System Info


Cheers,
Roger

[Break42]

Hi hendorog,
do you know the changes in the newest 00.02.02.03.05 version? Are there release notes included?
Could you please add here the firmware  changes / bug fixies / improvements?

[hendorog]

Hi,
Nothing was included apart from the binary itself, but I have asked for them.

I noticed a couple of things which I hadn't seen before (quite possible that they were already there and I missed them)
* Digital filter option in the Math menu
* 1553B decoding option
* 1553B trigger option

Also I did a test with a signal gen - note its not super clean so harmonics might be a factor - but I was able to display a trace up to 1160 MHz - and the frequency counter worked...  Seems pretty amazing! This is a DS4014/500

[alank2]

Where did you see this 1553b decoding option?  Do you have a screen shot of it?

[hendorog]

I've added them to the above post.

Cheers.

[Gunb]

I've added them to the above post.

Cheers.

Could you please attach the firmware release, too?


Rgds
Gunb

[dr.diesel]

Could you please add here the firmware  changes / bug fixies / improvements?

Hi,
Nothing was included apart from the binary itself, but I have asked for them.

[hendorog]

I just completed the form requesting the firmware and got it back within a couple of hours.

But here's a link to dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jur2qdshdw4dsyz/DS4000Update.00.02.02.03.05.GEL?dl=0

[Gunb]

Here is the link from Rigol - which is still working for me:

http://beyondmeasure.rigoltech.com/acton/ct/1579/s-0592-1501/Bct/l-3f49/l-3f49:bfa/ct2_0/1?sid=QeaAQw9Wk

Thank you, Sir! ;-)

Rgds
Gunb

[Omikron]

Hey All!

As I previously posted, even though I had experimented with alank2's cal PCB already, I pressed TEquipment into carrying the official Rigol kit finally and after many weeks of waiting, it finally arrived.  Why it arrived in such an ABSURDLY large box, is beyond me.  In fact, as the photos will show, nearly every bit of packaging involved in shipping this thing is more ridiculous than the last.

Screwball packaging aside, it seems to be very well built for being what it is.  PCB appears to have a large ground plane on one side with all of the signal traces on the back.  Cables appear to be of good quality as well.  Some of the soldering on the BNC connectors on the board were...less than ideal.  Some of the connections seemed to have too much solder on them, and I spotted one or two cold joints, along with some flux residue left on the board around the connectors.

All in all, I figure if you have the cash to buy the scope, the $40 for the official cal kit is worth it, although it begs the question why they can't just include it with the higher end scopes.

[alank2]

Hi,

Have you tried it yet?  Let me know if it works better than my pcb.  $40 isn't a bad deal for it.  When I called Rigol they wanted $120 or something!

BTW, all of you 4K users, if anyone wants a spare set of probes, I usually use my own probes, so I have 4 brand new RP3500A's.  They normally retail for $220 each, but I'll sell them for $130 each.

Thanks,

Alan

[Omikron]

Hi,

Have you tried it yet?  Let me know if it works better than my pcb.  $40 isn't a bad deal for it.  When I called Rigol they wanted $120 or something!

BTW, all of you 4K users, if anyone wants a spare set of probes, I usually use my own probes, so I have 4 brand new RP3500A's.  They normally retail for $220 each, but I'll sell them for $130 each.

Thanks,

Alan

Hey Alan! Waiting for the scope to warm up to try it now. :-)

[commongrounder]

The Rigol calibration cable/board kit looks interesting.  I wonder how it might be used on a two channel DS4000 series scope.  Would the two unused open connectors cause reflections that might screw up the scope's cal routine?  I assume you can't just terminate the unused jacks with 50 ohms, since we don't know exactly what the scope is doing (do we?) with input termination during the routine.  I've been using BNC tees with decent 50 ohm cables to do mine so far.  Maybe that is good enough.

The extreme over-packaging is amazing.  It's clear that the Rigol box was some sort of generic packaging, and TEquipment had no idea how it was packed and erred on the careful side.  At least most of it is recycle-able or reuse-able.   My worst case was when I received a backordered 1/2 watt resistor in five layers of packaging. The outermost box was 12 x 12 x 12 inches 

[Omikron]

Hi,

Have you tried it yet?  Let me know if it works better than my pcb.  $40 isn't a bad deal for it.  When I called Rigol they wanted $120 or something!

BTW, all of you 4K users, if anyone wants a spare set of probes, I usually use my own probes, so I have 4 brand new RP3500A's.  They normally retail for $220 each, but I'll sell them for $130 each.

Thanks,

Alan

Hey Alan! Waiting for the scope to warm up to try it now. :-)

The verdict is in! No observable difference, although I have to admit that I did have some difficulty with the PCB and ended up just building a cable that looks identical to the one pictured in the Rigol calibration guide. :-)

[alank2]

For $40 I would have just ordered their fixture, that isn't too bad a price, but like you I agree they should provide it with the scope.

[hendorog]

do you know the changes in the newest 00.02.02.03.05 version? Are there release notes included?
Could you please add here the firmware  changes / bug fixies / improvements?

Rigol just sent release notes - see attached

Cheers,
Roger

[Trev4G]

As current probes are very expensive for the amount of use I would put one to I have built my own. This presents two problems:
1) How do I power the probe?
2) How do I tell the scope about the probe (other than manually configure)?

The 7 contact probe pinboards under the BNC's on my MSO4014 look like they may contain the answer to both these problems. Is there a spec for these connections ? Has anybody tried using them?

At present there appears to be a +/- 5V supply but I don't know the current rating. The centre pin is used by the RP3500A probes to signal that is a x10. That looks a fairly simple signal so I could probably work it out. As for the rest I have no idea.

Can't help feeling someone must have been here before.

[thn788]

Anybody had a look at the release notes posted by hendorog above and noticed change #7 for version 00.02.02.03.05: "Supporting the upgrading of bandwidth by license" ? ;-)

[H.O]

Yes, but so what? ;-)
The option codes, to be plugged into the keygen, for unlocking the bandwidth was published on the forum quite some time ago now.

Edit: See this post.

[thn788]

Yes, I know, using the keygen it has indeed been possible to upgrade the bandwidth for quite some time; not just for the 4000-series (and before this was supported for the 4000-series special patched FW was available to upgrade the bandwidth).

But there have always been recurring comparisons, discussions and doubts in several threads here in the forum (and elsewhere) whether or not the hardware of the different bandwidth models really was indeed identical, all individual devices capable and tested for full-bandwidth operation, etc., because Rigol never offered bandwidth-upgrades via option-keys themselves. Although I haven't seen any official Rigol bandwidth upgrade-options for sale anywhere, so far, why should they document this possibility in the release notes, now, if they didn't plan to sell such option keys? Or to put this thought one step further: Why would they plan to sell such options, if they had any doubts their hardware was indeed fully capable of these upgrades?

With this change-note Rigol confirms that at least for the 4000-series the different bandwidth models are indeed identical.



Edit: Apparently Rigol has also updated the user guide accordingly and does indeed list official ordering-codes for bandwidth upgrades on page 18-2, now:
http://www.rigol.com/download/Oversea/DS/User_guide/MSO4000&DS4000_UserGuide_EN.pdf

They list only bandwidth upgrade options for 200+ MHz models to 350/500 MHz, though.

Whether or not the 100 MHz models are (artificially/politically) unsupported for bandwidth upgrades or whether there are indeed some hardware differences or quality regressions in (at least some) individual devices preventing full bandwidth capabilities, probably is  still open for further discussions and doubts... Or whether they might have actually modified the new firmware to refuse (new) bandwidth upgrade keys on 100 MHz models... ;-)

Probably no 401x-owners out there who dare uninstalling their bandwidth-options, updating the firmware and trying to re-install the bandwidth options, are there? ;-) Are there already any reports from new 401x-owners, whose scopes already shipped with the new firmware? Do the bandwidth-keys still work?

[H.O]

But there have always been recurring comparisons, discussions and doubts in several threads here in the forum (and elsewhere) whether or not the hardware of the different bandwidth models really was indeed identical, all individual devices capable and tested for full-bandwidth operation, etc., because Rigol never offered bandwidth-upgrades via option-keys themselves.

Well, untill we get to compare an upgraded 100MHz DS4k scope to a "real" 500MHz DS4k scope there's no way to say for sure. All I can personally say is that while feeding a 100MHz, 100mV peak to peak signal into my DS4014 it showed as 85mV pre update and 98mV post update. I'm willing to bet that there's NO difference between a "real" 500MHz model and an updated 100MHz unit.

Although I haven't seen any official Rigol bandwidth upgrade-options for sale anywhere, so far, why should they document this possibility in the release notes, now, if they didn't plan to sell such option keys?

TE Equipment is selling the bandwidth options. Though, just as the manual says, only for 200MHz and 350MHz models.

Probably no 401x-owners out there who dare uninstalling their bandwidth-options, updating the firmware and trying to re-install the bandwidth options, are there? ;-) Are there already any reports from new 401x-owners, whose scopes already shipped with the new firmware? Do the bandwidth-keys still work?

We'll have to see if someone dares to update. I'm currently on 02.02.01.01 and see no need to update at the moment so I'll just wait.

[thn788]

If you look at this post from hendorog (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-mso4000-and-ds4000-tests-bugs-firmware-questions-etc/msg652695/#msg652695) it seems that he did already update his previously BW-unlocked scope successfully:

• He mentions he has a DS4014/500, which, I suppose, means a 100 MHz DS4014 unlocked to 500 MHz.
• He apparently has updated to the new firmware, already (Two posts before he mentions availability of the new version) as he lists some changes in the new version and shows them in screenshots.
• He even demonstrates measuring a sinus with 1.16 GHz.

While we may certainly doubt that his DS4014 suddenly has turned into a 1 GHz scope after the firmware update, it has most probably not fallen back to 100 MHz bandwidth during the update.

So I guess updating an already unlocked scope to the new firmware doesn't invalidate the installed options, but I'm wondering why Rigol mentions an enhancement to the new firmware in the release notes to support upgrading the bandwidth via license-key. As demonstrated here lots of times, this was already possible in previous firmware versions, so why mention this as change in the release notes instead of just selling such option-keys?

This makes me wonder if the bandwidth keys can still be installed in the new firmware running on a "virgin" 100 MHz DS/MSO 401x?!

Most of the time I'm also willing to bet that all the different bandwidth models of Rigol's scopes use identical hardware, but on the other hand looking at the low-end DS1000Z-series: why has there been a shortage of DS1054Z models for so long, while the DS1074Z and DS1104Z models where still available from all shops? They could easily have just downgraded the bandwidth and put a different sticker on the front to meet the customer demand for more DS1054Z models?!

[hendorog]

The bandwidth hack for the DS4000 has some history:
* Originally a custom MrKrabs firmware needed to be installed.
* Later this senonday post was able to achieve it with keys https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/sniffing-the-rigol's-internal-i2c-bus/msg523679/#msg523679

I've done both of those in the past. However the keys approach means that the firmware can be updated without affecting anything, and I have done this at least twice now.

I suspect that the Rigol release notes don't accurately reflect when the licence key bandwidth feature was added.
* Originally it did not work, and hence the custom MrKrabs firmware was required.
* Then at some later point serenoday discovered it works - therefore I think they was on a newer firmware than the original testers - a firmware which already had the bandwidth feature at the time.

He mentions he has a DS4014/500, which, I suppose, means a 100 MHz DS4014 unlocked to 500 MHz.

Correct.

While we may certainly doubt that his DS4014 suddenly has turned into a 1 GHz scope after the firmware update, it has most probably not fallen back to 100 MHz bandwidth during the update.

Correct, it was just an observation I thought was interesting. The signal was much attenuated and some tweaking of levels was required, but the freq counter displayed correctly and the trace was visible which was a surprise.
IIRC 500MHz was within 3dB no problem.

This makes me wonder if the bandwidth keys can still be installed in the new firmware running on a "virgin" 100 MHz DS/MSO 401x?!

I expect it still works, but that is based on my theory that Rigol implemented the license key feature a while ago and just added it to the release notes now.

[thn788]

I noticed McKrabs custom BW-upgrade firmware in the past but never tried it myself. When the senonday post published the option keys for BW-upgrades I assumed these keys just hadn't been discovered before. So these key don't work in older firmware?

You might have a good point about the "accuracy" of the release notes, hendorog: in your post you list the new digital filter and the 1553B decoder/trigger, but unless I just missed them, none of these are mentioned in the release notes. While the digital filter is described in the new, updated user guide, the 1553B features seem not to be mentioned.

Maybe the release notes and manuals just match the real firmware features accidentally every once in a while... :-D

(Don't get me wrong: I really like the Rigol scopes, PSUs and DMMs I have used, so far. Really good "bang-per-buck", but especially the release notes unfortunately still leave many wishes open...)

[hendorog]

Yep - I'd say anyone who has had to produce accurate release notes/change list from a large dev team and/or over long time periods would understand how hard it can be. Its not a problem for my type of use of the scope anyway.

Maybe the release notes and manuals just match the real firmware features accidentally every once in a while... :-D

Haha