HP Logic Analyzer

shilmover

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All,

Anyone here use Logic Analyzers? I have an opportunity to purchase an HP 16500C Logic Analyzer with a couple of cards and an Oscilloscope card. Its missing the pods...

Any thoughts? Anyone have extra pods?
 
Can you give me some info as to why? What is the cost on a HP1660C?

Edit: I can get the 16500C for around $250

They are vastly different beasts. The 1660C is a benchtop logic analyzer, while the 16500C is a frame that you put logic analyzer or oscilliscope or whatever cards into. I think the 1660C is a newer piece of equipment, and if you JUST want the logic analysis that it provides, it might be a better value (if buying a complete system on the open market). It also might have better performance and features, being newer.

That said, the 16500C mainframe with appropriate cards is NOT to be sneezed at. It's damn fine logic analysis system and it's really nice to have scope and logic analysis cards in one frame, and have them cross trigger. I always found the software in the 16500 series (we had an A that we upgraded all the way to a C) to be really easy to use (except for text entry). Touch screen + a knob was great for most things. The C also has an ethernet port, I think, which means it can communicate with the outside world other than via floppy disk.

The 16500C is also a pretty big beast, and I suspect the 1660C to be (while sill large) a bit less massive, though I could be wrong.

Given what you've said, $250 for a WORKING mainframe alone is probably a good deal. The cards included are great, IF THEY WORK. The problem is that without the pods, you can't tell if they work or not. I don't know what they sell for today, but 12 or 15 years ago when I last bought new pods for one, they were in the $180 per pod range. You can get oscilliscope probes for less than $100 in lots of places, but the logic analyzer pods are very specific to the manufacturer, and I don't think you can get them anywhere except Agilent.

One other thing: Try to get the original disks and manuals, if possible. They might come in handy at some point.
 
Thanks for the info.

It is local to me (actually, the guy happens to live 5 minutes from me).

Everything works... He has pods for his other analyzer and will connect them to show me that they all work.

It comes with the following cards:
- 100MHz State/500MHz Timing (16550A, I think)?
- Scope Aquisition 400 Megasample/s
- Scope timebase 400 Megasample/s
 
Thanks for the info.

It is local to me (actually, the guy happens to live 5 minutes from me).

Everything works... He has pods for his other analyzer and will connect them to show me that they all work.

It comes with the following cards:
- 100MHz State/500MHz Timing (16550A, I think)?
- Scope Aquisition 400 Megasample/s
- Scope timebase 400 Megasample/s

If everything works, that's not a bad price at all. Although I prefer the 166x's myself beacuse they're smaller, more reliable (here at work we have whole shelf of dead 165xx cards), and the user interface is more-better. Some folks actually prefer the touchscreen, but I like the buttons and knobs better. The 16550A is also about twice as fast as the 166x, but is still way overkill for arcade work.

Oh, and no boot disk for the 166x. I think there are boot disks for the 16500, unless it has the hard drive option?
 
If everything works, that's not a bad price at all. Although I prefer the 166x's myself beacuse they're smaller, more reliable (here at work we have whole shelf of dead 165xx cards), and the user interface is more-better. Some folks actually prefer the touchscreen, but I like the buttons and knobs better. The 16550A is also about twice as fast as the 166x, but is still way overkill for arcade work.

Oh, and no boot disk for the 166x. I think there are boot disks for the 16500, unless it has the hard drive option?

Perfect. Thanks...

This model has the boot disks, hard drive, and LAN
 
Thanks for the info.

It is local to me (actually, the guy happens to live 5 minutes from me).

Everything works... He has pods for his other analyzer and will connect them to show me that they all work.

It comes with the following cards:
- 100MHz State/500MHz Timing (16550A, I think)?
- Scope Aquisition 400 Megasample/s
- Scope timebase 400 Megasample/s

For $250 that's an awesome deal, get it. They're a bit 'big' but it's a great unit, I used one of these before I got a Tektronix TLA. I originally used one of these when I first started working on Williams hardware.

Having the scope option is a nice to have too should you want to look at analog signals.

The downsides are the user interface is a bit 'klunky', IMO the older tekronic 1200 series had a nicer UI, plus the screen redraw is slow if you have a lot of traces on. The nice features is you can connect to the network and FTP the trace files from the thing.

The 16500C natively supported harddisk and network connectivity. HP/Agilent used to have all the OS disks and manuals stuff online.

The sample cards for it are pretty cheap these days too.

- James


Edit: oh. yeah.. the network interface is slow, even for 10MBps, plus the 16500C supported X-windows so you could remotely control it from your PC through an X Windows client.
 
For $250 that's an awesome deal, get it. They're a bit 'big' but it's a great unit, I used one of these before I got a Tektronix TLA. I originally used one of these when I first started working on Williams hardware.

Having the scope option is a nice to have too should you want to look at analog signals.

The downsides are the user interface is a bit 'klunky', IMO the older tekronic 1200 series had a nicer UI, plus the screen redraw is slow if you have a lot of traces on. The nice features is you can connect to the network and FTP the trace files from the thing.

The 16500C natively supported harddisk and network connectivity. HP/Agilent used to have all the OS disks and manuals stuff online.

The sample cards for it are pretty cheap these days too.

- James


Edit: oh. yeah.. the network interface is slow, even for 10MBps, plus the 16500C supported X-windows so you could remotely control it from your PC through an X Windows client.

Perfect. Thanks James!

Picking it up tomorrow... :)
 
Picked it up tonight (had to use my knees... its a beast... :D)

Got it for $230. He has the original manual for the scope card, so I will be picking that up tomorrow. He believes he has a set of probes (cables are there) that he will look for and give me.

Anyone have any probes? grabbers?
 
Maybe we should start a thread to try to learn how to use these things. I have had one for months and haven't even had time to figure out where to start.

There is another option for input on these. I don't know what it does, but it looks cool.

009-1.jpg



Edit: Here is a pic of the 16500s next to the 1660. The 1660 is about half the depth as well.
002-1.jpg
 
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Well, I was thinking about getting a logic analyzer and it would have been this -
http://www.hobbylab.us/default.aspx

I would make my own test probes with these clips and wire -
http://www.testpath.com/Categories/Minigrabber-Test-Clips-2970.htm
http://www.testpath.com/Categories/Test-Lead-Wire-Silicone-3086.htm

What do you think of these items?

Depends on what you plan on doing with it. The sample rates on those things are really slow, so they wouldn't be very effective troubleshooting arcade boards, even the older slower ones. Typically you want a sample rate of at least 8x the maximum frequency you expect to be able to see (I know some folks are going to ding me here. :)) Ideally you want 16x or better. The max sampling frequency of that thing is 8MHz, so you'd be hard-pressed to see edges above 1-2 MHz. And wait... is that 128 BITS per channel @ 8MHz??? Well you won't be able to capture for very long at all, meaning the time window you would see around the trigger point would be very very short.

It would make neat paperweight.
 
Maybe we should start a thread to try to learn how to use these things. I have had one for months and haven't even had time to figure out where to start.

That would be cool...

There is another option for input on these. I don't know what it does, but it looks cool.

009-1.jpg

I did notice that. I may have one in storage...

Depends on what you plan on doing with it. The sample rates on those things are really slow, so they wouldn't be very effective troubleshooting arcade boards, even the older slower ones. Typically you want a sample rate of at least 8x the maximum frequency you expect to be able to see (I know some folks are going to ding me here. :)) Ideally you want 16x or better. The max sampling frequency of that thing is 8MHz, so you'd be hard-pressed to see edges above 1-2 MHz. And wait... is that 128 BITS per channel @ 8MHz??? Well you won't be able to capture for very long at all, meaning the time window you would see around the trigger point would be very very short.

It would make neat paperweight.

Agreed!
 
Depends on what you plan on doing with it. The sample rates on those things are really slow, so they wouldn't be very effective troubleshooting arcade boards, even the older slower ones. Typically you want a sample rate of at least 8x the maximum frequency you expect to be able to see (I know some folks are going to ding me here. :)) Ideally you want 16x or better. The max sampling frequency of that thing is 8MHz, so you'd be hard-pressed to see edges above 1-2 MHz. And wait... is that 128 BITS per channel @ 8MHz??? Well you won't be able to capture for very long at all, meaning the time window you would see around the trigger point would be very very short.

It would make neat paperweight.

I would use this thing on a Stargate and Defender board that have a 1 Mhz 6809E CPU. So 8 Mhz sampling should be ok? And shouldn't 128 bits of minimum buffer reading be ok when you trigger and expect immediate logic responses?

What are edges?

It seems like a nice hobbyist logic analyzer to me... but I'm not an expert on logic analyzers.
 
I would use this thing on a Stargate and Defender board that have a 1 Mhz 6809E CPU. So 8 Mhz sampling should be ok?

Not really. A 1 MHz clock wave has two transitions (see your question below) per period. Best case, if the clock is a perfect square wave then there would be one transition exactly in the middle of the clock period. So the clock edges actually occur at a 2 MHz rate. At an 8MHz sampling frequency, you're oversampling the 1 MHz clock transistions by only 4x. That kind of resolution will allow you to acknowledge that a signal transition occurred, and that's about it. It would be very hard to tell exactly *where* the transitions occurred in time within the clock period.

Now that might be ok if all you're looking at is the 1 MHz clock. But consider that other signals derived from the clock timing are going to land at all points in between the 1 MHz clock period. Since you're sampling so slow, there will be no way to tell where those transitions occurred within the clock period and it will look like an incoherent jumbled mess.

And shouldn't 128 bits of minimum buffer reading be ok when you trigger and expect immediate logic responses?

Possibly. But the depth of capture memory is really too short to effectively operate at the maximum sampling frequency.

What are edges?

Edges are logic signal transitions, either from zero volts to 5V, or from 5V to 0V.

It seems like a nice hobbyist logic analyzer to me...

It would be fine for analyzing signals up to a couple hundred kHz. It would be ineffective for analyzing anything faster. HTH
 
That first one you mentioned wouldn't do you a lick of good on an arcade board. The second one looks interesting. At least the 75MHz bandwidth gets you in the ball park. If it were me I'd still put that money toward a nice used HP logic analyzer. Are you looking for something new? Or specifically PC-based?

The clips you mentioned might not be small enough to effectively latch on to DIP IC pins. They're made more for test terminal posts. I use these guys:

http://www.display3000.com/shop_eng...mall-and-professional-for-logic-analyzer.html

I have an HP1661A (100 channels) I use for board repair. Although I probably will upgrade in the future. :)



I guess you're saying then that my logic analyzer would barely be enough for Stargate and Defenders 1 Mhz rate.

What will you use your logic analyzers for? Do you repair a lot of pcbs?

Did you like my recommended test clips and wires?

Maybe this will be better...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...380170020137&ff4=263602_263622#ht_4531wt_1058
 
That first one you mentioned wouldn't do you a lick of good on an arcade board. The second one looks interesting. At least the 75MHz bandwidth gets you in the ball park. If it were me I'd still put that money toward a nice used HP logic analyzer. Are you looking for something new? Or specifically PC-based?

The clips you mentioned might not be small enough to effectively latch on to DIP IC pins. They're made more for test terminal posts. I use these guys:

http://www.display3000.com/shop_eng...mall-and-professional-for-logic-analyzer.html

I have an HP1661A (100 channels) I use for board repair. Although I probably will upgrade in the future. :)

Those are the clips I use... They rock! Tektronix has some too, but I prefer the HP ones...
 
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