{Hardware} engineer Tom Verbeure has given a basic HP/Agilent logic analyzer a brand new lease on life — by determining find out how to 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. “Not like 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 choice. A bandwidth of 500MHz and 2GSa/s sampling price are very good specs.”
What do you do whenever you choose up a roughly 23-year-old logic analyzer at a flea market? Get it speaking to your Linux desktop, after all. (📷: Tom Verbeure)
The system, described by Verbeure as being in “pristine” situation, is fully usable as-is — although its use of floppy disks for knowledge storage could elevate just a few points when you rid your self of three.5″ floppies already. The system boasts community connectivity, although, which might make it far more user-friendly — however its age presents some points.
“[You can] function the UI by means of an exterior X Window server,” Verbeure explains. “It was once simple to have any form 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 sophisticated 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 tackle — the straightforward half — then work out find out how to persuade a contemporary, comparatively locked-down X Window server to speak to the X Window shopper on the logic analyzer to be able to carry up the person interface remotely. This required set up of the socat relay software, 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 essential,” Verbeure notes. “Your logic analyzer will crash when you do not do that!”
As soon as all of the hoops have been efficiently jumped by means of, the HP logic analyzer is totally remote-controllable. (📷: Tom Verbeure)
With all that carried out, the machine’s person interface ought to pop up on the Linux desktop for full two-way interplay — offering a way more handy approach to management it than the front-panel knobs and buttons, which Verbeure describes as “not a pleasing expertise,” while not having 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 yr he took aside an HP 16500A, determining a approach to drive its compact 10″ cathode-ray tube (CRT) show from exterior gadgets — with a bit assist from an area library’s microfiche reader to get a take a look at the half’s schematics.
Verbeure’s full write-up is offered on his weblog.
