Repair of 2 Agilent 54831 Oscilloscopes
10 hours ago
- #Hardware Hacking
- #Oscilloscope Repair
- #Vintage Electronics
- The author purchased two broken Agilent 54831 oscilloscopes for $200 at a flea market, both from the early 2000s.
- Unit A, an Agilent 54831M with Windows 98, initially failed to boot due to a CPU seating issue, which was resolved by reinserting the CPU.
- Unit B, an Agilent 54831B with Windows XP, had no hard drive or IDE cables; it was fixed using a CompactFlash adapter and a software image from an online source.
- The CPU temperature alarm in Unit B was triggered; disabling it in BIOS and applying new thermal paste reduced temperatures from 64°C to around 40–65°C under load.
- Both scopes were upgraded to 1 GHz bandwidth (equivalent to Agilent 54832) by removing a single resistor on the acquisition board, confirmed by improved rise time measurements.
- Additional potential modifications include installing faster SSDs, upgrading to a higher-resolution LCD screen, or using a P4 motherboard, but the author opted for minimal changes.
- The total repair cost was around $230, and after selling Unit A for $200, the author kept a fully functional 4 Gsps oscilloscope with 1 GHz bandwidth.