sam. 09 octobre 2021

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - part 6

Quick follow up; I recently got back on this project to try to complete it and fix remaining problems.

The source code for the firmware is available here:

https://hg.sr.ht/~douardda/hp34970-firmware

The Kicad project is available here:

https://git.sr.ht/~douardda/hp34970-pcb

Making the USBDevice work …

sam. 07 novembre 2020

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - part 5

After a loooong pause on this project, I have recently been able to work on it again. In the previous post in this series, I've started to implement a replacement board prototype based on a an NUCLEO board and an SSD1322-based OLED display.

Meanwhile, I have also almost completely described …

ven. 20 avril 2018

HP8662A Synthetized Signal Generator - Part 3

This is the part 3 on my series about my HP 8662A Signal Generator, and is about the third main problems I found with this unit, as evocated in part 2: Error 04 is lit and there are some very unpleasant spectrums at some frequencies.

Low Fequency Section

If the …

jeu. 12 avril 2018

HP8662A Synthetized Signal Generator - Part 2

This is the part 2 on my series about my HP 8662A Signal Generator. After fixing the PSU, several more problems needed to be addressed:

  • a few sloppy keys on the keypad,
  • the know did not work at all,
  • and more importantly, some very unpleasant spectrums at some frequencies (covered …

sam. 24 mars 2018

HP8662A Synthetized Signal Generator - Part 1

I recently pulled an HP 8662A I bought a while ago from my cellar. I don't remember exactly in what condition it was advertized when I purchased it, but it was most probably advertized as non working (otherwise it would have been cheap enough, more, what the fun in buying …

mar. 22 novembre 2016

HP 3456A Digital Voltmeter

A very long time ago, I bought a venerable HP 3456A Digital Voltmeter. Back then, I had no clear idea what kind of device it is; but it was cheap. It worked quite fine (it is indeed not calibrated), but I noticed for a while that it was quite unstable …

dim. 18 septembre 2016

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - communication protocol

In order to build a replacement display for the HP34970A data acquisition unit, I needed to understand the communication protocol between the CPU board and the front panel assembly.

General description

The unit is built with four boards:

  • A1 is the main bard, with the PSU, the main controller and …

sam. 17 septembre 2016

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - part 4

After a summer pause, I'm back on my HP34970A repair project. In the previous post in this series, I've started to reverse engineer the serial protocol between the CPU board and the front panel, and implement a prototype of replacement display.

OLED display

I bought the bigest OLED display I …

dim. 26 juin 2016

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - part 3

As explained in the previous post in this series, I've started to sniff the serial protocol between the main board and the display panel so I can replace the failed VFD by an OLED or TFT display managed by an arduino or similar.

Protocol

The serial communication takes place at …

mer. 22 juin 2016

HP 34970A Data Acquisition Unit - part 2

This is quick follow up of my previous blog post on my attempt to fix my recently acquired HP 34970A.

In my hurry to replace the failing FRAM (FM24C04) chips, I also replaced the FRAM chip on one of my 2 plugin modules.

Bad idea: the module then provoques an …