Hi everyone.
I thought it might be useful to post my experience with upgrading my TDS3012 using the much-publicised bandwidth hack.
I followed the method published here…
https://hackaday.io/project/172242-extension-card-for-tds3000-scopesI didn’t have access to a communication module, so I hacked together a circuit to write a byte to the 3012’s data bus, I used a 74HC245AN as it is through-hole (and it was what I had).
Setting up the communication proved to be pretty simple; I left the scope coms settings at their default values and configured my cheap eBay usb-ttl module for 9600 baud.
At first I had problems establishing a link but this was solved by tying together the CTS/RTS lines coming from the scope.
After sending the password and upgrade command I immediately shut down the scope and, on restart, it reports that it is a 3052 -success!
The next phase of the project was to evaluate the actual scope bandwidth. I hooked up a mercury-wetted relay to my scope and got a rise time of about 1.5nS (not bad for a rat’s-nest build and using my ‘100Mhz’ ebay probe) but this was hardly definitive so I tried feeding square waves from various signal generators I had lying around the lab but the best I could manage was 1.35nS (using the sync output from a Hantek 1025g)
I decided to build an avalanche pulser as I had a HV PSU.
I used the schematic shown here:
I soldered the components directly onto a BNC plug and tried to keep the connections as short as possible:
Amazingly it worked first time (O.K… second time) and despite being a total lash-up, generated really nice sharp pulses, oscillation began at about 103V (with the values given f=~10KHz)
As you can see, I’m getting around 950pS rise times which around equates to around 400Mhz bandwidth.
Now I’m seriously toying with the idea of buying one of Leo Bodnar’s 40pS pulsers (
http://www.leobodnar.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=295)