{Hardware} engineer Tom Verbeure has given a basic HP/Agilent logic analyzer a brand new lease on life — by determining get a contemporary Linux desktop to speak to its classic X Window System set up for distant operation and show.
“Produced someday early 2000, it’s new sufficient to have an Agilent sticker,” Verbeure writes of the HP 1670G, picked up on the Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market. “In contrast to most different HP logic analyzers, a 1670G doesn’t have growth playing cards: what you see is what you get, however 136 channels that may be sampled at 500MHz is loads, and my machine has the two channel oscilloscope possibility. A bandwidth of 500MHz and 2GSa/s sampling charge are very good specs.”
What do you do once you decide up a roughly 23-year-old logic analyzer at a flea market? Get it speaking to your Linux desktop, in fact. (📷: Tom Verbeure)
The system, described by Verbeure as being in “pristine” situation, is completely usable as-is — although its use of floppy disks for knowledge storage could increase a couple of points should you rid your self of three.5″ floppies already. The system boasts community connectivity, although, which might make it rather more user-friendly — however its age presents some points.
“[You can] function the UI by an exterior X Window server,” Verbeure explains. “It was straightforward to have any sort of X shopper connect with a distant X server. Again within the early Nineties on the HP Apollo workstations in school, it was a easy matter of setting the DISPLAY surroundings variable, however that was earlier than community safety was a priority. Issues are bit extra difficult now, and it took me a few hours to get the distant X server connection up and working on my Ubuntu 20.04 machine.”
To get the system speaking to a contemporary Linux system, Verbeure needed to set a static IP deal with — the simple half — then determine persuade a contemporary, comparatively locked-down X Window server to speak to the X Window shopper on the logic analyzer with a purpose to carry up the consumer interface remotely. This required set up of the socat relay instrument, the opening of firewall guidelines, cautious routing of incoming requests to the system’s present show, and the set up of font information particular to the logic analyzer. “That is tremendous vital,” Verbeure notes. “Your logic analyzer will crash should you do not do that!”
As soon as all of the hoops have been efficiently jumped by, the HP logic analyzer is totally remote-controllable. (📷: Tom Verbeure)
With all that accomplished, the machine’s consumer interface ought to pop up on the Linux desktop for full two-way interplay — offering a way more handy technique to management it than the front-panel knobs and buttons, which Verbeure describes as “not a pleasing expertise,” with no need to seek out room for a devoted keyboard an mouse.
This is not the primary time Verbeure has performed with the interior workings of a classic HP logic analyzer. Again in October final 12 months he took aside an HP 16500A, determining a technique to drive its compact 10″ cathode-ray tube (CRT) show from exterior units — with just a little assist from a neighborhood library’s microfiche reader to get a take a look at the half’s schematics.
Verbeure’s full write-up is accessible on his weblog.