Turn your Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope into a 100MHz DS1102E

Podcast:

I hope you are not pretending to argue that he should have done so. I would hope you feel he is free to act in his own perceived interests.

One doesn't 'organize' themselves. A person of 1 is not an organization.

What is wrong with hacking something you buy?

Not by the mere fact of hacking, he didn't.

Ah, you mean "he cost them money __because__ he went public." Different thing. Precision in writing words might help.

But I already addressed this pointing out that you can't know this. And I gave a possible alternative view, as well. Which you didn't discuss, at all. So I see no need to re-address myself to something I've already spoken about and which you have not responded to.

Of course they have lawyers. At least one.

You are (not so) secretly wishing that Dave would get his hands slapped.

You certainly have NOT made a very good case as to why, yet.

So?

Jon

No. Overclocking is not illegal.

John

And so much vandalism.

John

John,

I cannot understand your logic - it is ok for Rigol to overclock slow ADCs and deprive ADC makers from income but it is not ok to "overclock" a Rigol scope?

Tom

You claimed the modded Rigol 'kinda sucks'. Why ? What were you expecting from a 100Mhz scope ? You also snipped the following... "The modded Rigol compared very well with a 100Mhz Tektronix TDS 1012." Care to comment why a TDS 1012 also 'kinda sucks' ?

It's with some interest I've read the discussions on the legality/morality of performing this mod.

Two thoughts come to mind-

First, it's been the practice by many cellphone compamies to sell phones to customers at less than cost, up to 50-70% off the retail price, to attract customers with the expectation that over the course of the contract the'll make thier money back. They protect their investment in gaining customers this way by software locking the phones so that they will only work on the provider's network. Of course it didn't take long for hackers to learn how to un-lock the phone's network restriction leading to the situation where people would sign up for service, get their phone, then cancel the contract, get the phone un-locked & go on a cheaper plan from the original provider's competitor. There was a lot of talk from the providers selling the subsidised phones about the legality of this but to my knowledge the people offering the un-locking service operated openly & none was ever prosecuted, beacuse at the end of the day the phones belonged to the customer.

The second thing that come to mind is a few years back suppliers of contact lenses (Boush & Laumb as well as Johnson & Johnson) ended up getting sued because they were selling daily use and long term contact lenses, with the daily use ones of course being significantly cheaper, when in fact both types of the lenses were the exact same product except for the packaging.

At the end of the day, unless you'ver signed something specifically legally preventing you from making this mod then it's got to be legal. simply by the fact it isn't illegal. Whether or not it's "moral" is going to depend on the individual's viewpoint.

H.

**Not even close. The real con was the Intel 486SX. It was a 486 chip, with a deliberately disabled maths co-processor.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

AND you can't be sure that they don't do anything more than just twiddle a bit, can you? You are sticking up for them as if you are 100% sure they did absolutely nothing wrong when all the evidence supports the opposite case. IMO they should have to prove they did nothing wrong which is quite simple. e.g., if you made inherently different performance versions of your product surely you can prove that they perform different?

Your justifications only show that you fit in the same group as Rigol. I won't be buying anything from you and I hope your customers will find someone else to give their money to.

That's only done to cut costs. If component selection *was* an issue, it would have been locked in hardware. A jumper perhaps, a bridge on a track, something.

I don't think so. The testing would have occurred during the board construction phase, before it has been programmed with firmware and fit into a case.

It appears the ONLY difference between the 50/100Mhz version is one character in the serial number, via unencrypted, keyboard-capable RS232 communications, on a port that's user accessible. Oh, and the sticky label.

Call it what you want, it's sloppy, they *have* been caught with their pants down.

There's nothing illegal about overclocking, or exploding, any chip. It might void a warranty, as power dissipation probably rises with clock rate. It may be illegal to use a computer to hack firmware if it deprives the IP owner of revenue.

I just tested some plain vanilla 10 ohm 1206 resistors for overload capability. They die at 26 volts in 1 millisecond, 1 Hz rep rate. That's 2.6 amps, 68 watts. They are cool to watch on the IR viewer, sort of like a pulsing LED. So it looks safe to use them at 22 volts for 120 microseconds, which is what I need. I don't think anybody will sue me for resistor abuse.

John

It has nothing to do with a infections. Youtube has been posting that warning for a while now. They are using/going to use features that are not supported in older browsers..

I had a choice to update to IE8 or FireFox on this older PC here, I went with Firefox. Seems to be ok..

It all started with Microsoft. They licensed MS DOS instead of selling it to IBM. This allowed MS to get a fee for every IBM computer sold with MS DOS on it. Initially MS was going to sale DOS to IBM but Gates changed his mind after the fact(not quite sure how it happened) because he did not want to give the source code to IBM.

In a perfectly ethical world there would be no such licensing issues. If you wanted the software you brought it outright and would not sale it or modify it to make a profit from other peoples work. Because software is not tangible there is nothing to stop someone from duplicating it and hence it is quite easy to get around having to pay the owner for it. This has nothing to do with software but with the societies ethics. The fact that piracy is widespread simply tells us that our moral standard has drastically changed for the worse.

"A hard days work for a hard day's pay" has been replaced with "I'll do anything for money and f*ck everyone else!"

The step response is pretty ugly. The step response of my unmodded

1052E is very nice.

A nice Gaussian step?

Compared to a clean scope, it does. They are made in China too. I don't know if Tek designs them or just rebrands.

I also don't know how clean a signal Dave applied.

John

Is it possible the 50 Mhz models are rejected 100mhz versions that may have not past some test at 100Mhz bw ? Units that wouldn't pass at

100 Mhz and be ok at 50 Mhz, would be waste just through the boards out.

Personally, I would get a little upset knowing they would charge an extra $300, with nothing more than a firmware setting change.. I would expect different internals for that much difference. But If it was like I suggested, then maybe some users can be happy with the possible defected operation at 100 mhz

Perhaps he doesn't appreciate that Rigol make these things in

*quantity*. Remember, they're overclocking the ADCs, so they're cutting costs in every way they can.

His justification would only work on small runs, where it would worthwhile to have someone MANUALLY plug in a port, test, program accordingly, and stick the relevant label.

The only cheap way to do it, is to have a production line test jig, that automagically programs, probes and accordingly presets the equipment to the required spec. All of this would be most economically viable for the numbers Rigol are handling, and even EASIER to obscure a simple "one character" difference.

Instead, they have this part of the communications available to the end user, via an industry standard interface and keyboard-capable commands.

Mind you, they *could* be doing it as I outlined above. But the fact remains, if it were so easy to obscure this part from the end user, why did they almost appear to go out of their way to make it easy instead?

Whether or not the user re-programming is, or is not allowed, likewise if it should or should not be allowable, is rather irrelevant now.

Whatever the reason, they *HAVE* made it easy, and this pretty much negates any whining IMO. That bolted horse comes to mind.

My customers understand they they have to pay for firmware, because it costs us money to develop. And they pay for extended temperature range boards, and they pay for extended warranty, and they pay for BIST. We offer them different things at different prices, and they have the option to buy from anyone who makes them a better offer. I do expect them to not hack my boards to steal our investment in firmware development. They are professionals with ethics, and they don't.

I wouldn't sell to you, because you would.

John

Maybe he paid full price for a DS1102E ?

I see and understand "Nial Stewarts" point.

$0.50 is like a slap in the face for MS..

I would how ever, do the honorable deed and pay $0.75 for it.

Jamie.

But neither is hacking your own bought 50MHz scope. I can't see how your views are consistent here.

Mark.