I wonder who that contact in Japan you have could be, I wonder if I know them?....
I can't even remember his name, you know this Japanese alphabet is a pain to learn, I have never been good at drawing or painting !
You wouldn't know him anyway, he isn't even Japanese !
His name is 蛇烈怒
(First character is an alternate pronunciation of 'hebi' or snake, if you plug it into google translate)
it's just a pity that RAM was still expensive at the time so the memory depth is a bit short when capturing at the full capabilities.
I guess given it's an RF scope, it kinda makes sense. It's not like you are interested in capturing a 3GHz serial bus mile long frame and then inspect it...
I guess you would be more interested in having a look at the shape of a rising edge or something. A screen-worth of data is enough for that. You don't need to " log data "... just look at a brief event.
Well that's my take on it anywho...
To be fair, that would be mainly my use case too, checking high speed signals for integrity and shape rather than decoding wi-fi on the fly.
It would be interesting to try to hack in RAM chips with greater capacity.......
You could add more RAM chips to the 694C ?!
And they didn't offer it as an option ?! Strange...
Or is it just you dreaming ? Then don't also forget to rewrite the firmware to make that extra RAM actually do anything !
Don't think the F/W was open-source back then !
and even it were good luck finding a programmer capable enough to modify the F/W.... that would not come cheap, nor be delivered quickly... I guess.
I was thinking to replace all the RAM chips with higher capacity parts for greater total memory, then altering the firmware so the scope is able to see and use it all.
Could be an interesting deep dive into these scopes... I wouldn't know where to start with the firmware side of things though......... I program with solder.
My main scopes are my TDS220, a Tek 2235 for when I want to go analogue, the TDS784D for 1GHz stuff, and finally the TDS794D which goes up to 2GHz (I need to track down some P6339A probes for it, and a top pouch and front cover too).
TDS220 or 224 still on my list, but although prices have come down quite a bit since COVID, they are still too expensive for what they are.
For me it's mostly a souvenir piece, as I remember unpacking them at school when we got a batch in the '90s when they had just hit the market. They looked so " expensive" and state of the art compared to our old basic crappy Metrix analog scopes. Plus, I love their design, find them so cute. Plus, they marked a milestone in the history of scopes, so it's a bit of a history piece as well.
So, want one, but not enough to buy into the speculation BS that surrounds them.
Yeah, I only grab these things cheap. I got two TDS210, and a TDS220, two of which need new polarizers in the LCD panel (hence why I got them cheap). Once I find the correct replacement polarizer type, I'll have a video up on youtube showing how to repair them.
AFAIK, I need a polarizer to suit FSTN LCD screens. I found a single seller on Aliexpress, but It's a bit pricey for a 'maybe it'll work, maybe not' so I'll do a little more research before hitting the buy button.