Any hacks for Tektronix TLA 704 Logic Analyzer? (Linux, maybe?)

Nov 03, 2004 2 Replies

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Rufus V. Smith 21 years ago

My company has a couple old Tektronix TLA704 logic analyzers, which aren't bad for data capture, but the display program is pretty doggy.

(It's an old PC-compatible mainframe, running Windows 95 in 32M of Ram)

Tektronics has ceased support on it and the only way to upgrade it is to swap the mainframe (a costly process, I'm sure). This would be nice, but for the amount of time we use the device, and for what purpose, this might not happen. I plan to at least upgrade the software to the last supported version...

I'm curious if anyone has done a Linux port to this mainframe. The tough part would be to get information on interfacing to the capture card. It contains a TLA 7M4 module.

Linux does a better job in the constrained environment than the latest Windows, and would probably run quicker.

Rufus

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jrok 21 years ago

The best thing to do for the display is to run with an external monitor, the old Cirrus Logic chipset can do 1024x768. If you really feel like some hacking of the main board you can desolder the pentium then put in a socket. It'll also support one of the ancient socket-5 overdrive CPU's to give you a half decent 180MHz. I got ahold of a slim line socket-5 to socket-7 adapters and put a 233MHz pentium MMX cpu on mine. It'll then run win2k pretty effectively and the newer versions of the S/W. You also need to upgrade the BIOS to support 128MB of RAM.

- James

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Rufus V. Smith 21 years ago

aren't

some

socket.

adapters

I guess hacks is the wrong term for this newsgroup. I really wanted to know if anyone had developed software to run on the existing hardware, for example, a Linux port that could read/write to the sample card.

However, your suggestions are very good, and I'll hold onto them in case my employer is inclined to encourage such modifications.

Those changes seem much more economical than a mainframe swap...

Rufus

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