Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi it's product tear down time and it's another oscilloscope just so happen to have this. Tetronics TDS 2024 C It's not a new scope, it's uh, it's a reasonbly old model. and no, I'm not going to review it cuz I don't think it's worthy.

Not going to bother I'm only going to do a 10 down now. The reason for that is because it just reminds me of the old TDS 210 oscilloscope. Not that there was anything wrong with that great oscilloscope in its day pioneering. it practically started the entire digital storage oscilloscope business.

All these bench portable ones anyway, the ones that had real time sampling. they started it all. but quite frankly I had one of those back in I think it was 1997 I'm not kidding, not 2007 1997 and it just reminds me of that. Sure, it's got a few more features, but the thing is, it's only got.

And here's the spec: 2.5 kilobytes of sample memory. That's not megabytes, that's kilobytes. It's barely enough to do. a couple of screens worth.

It's hopeless now. Where is the advancement of the art in the sample memory depth? Exactly the same 2.5k sample memory I Can't believe it. This is. you know Tectronics is current model and it's just not competitive.

It's crazy in terms of sample memory. it's not a bad scope, you know I can picture it being useful for say the tech Fanboys or uh, something like that and that you only want a basic scope that just displays a waveform on the screen and that's it. Well, okay, maybe, but jeez, I don't know. It's not very competitive, so don't expect a review of this thing I Don't think it's really worthy, but we're going to tear it down cuz I'm quite curious to to see what's inside.

Let's go just one thing. Don't confuse this TDS series with the DPO 2000 series or the MSO 2000 series. They're a different, higher-end technology scope. They cost a lot more.

They've got them sample memory. They've got everything else. but this is the TDS series. All right.

I Know some people are going to want a little quick summary of it. really. it's quite small and, uh, lightweight, so you know, As you'd expect, it's reasonably good quality being Tectronics one of the big names in the business. and it is fanless too.

It doesn't make a sound, doesn't generate a sound. It is much lighter weight than, say, the uh reference Ryo Here, it's about the same uh width. It is, uh, not as deep as the Riyo unit, but it certainly does weigh a fair bit less, but it takes forever to boot up. It takes like 30 or 35 seconds.

crazy. On the back here, we've got a single USB uh port to connect to the PC for control and on the front, we've got a USB memory stick. It's got a fair few more controls in the original uh TDS Uh 200 series or the Uh or the even the new Tectronics TDS 1000 series which actually replaced the Uh 200 series. This is actually another reason why I'm disappointed by the 2.5k of sample memory cuz it's not like this is the TDS 1000 Series This is the supposedly The Next Step Up TDS 2000 series and 2.5k memory.

It's crazy. Anyway, it's pretty bland looking actually. Um, the just the color and the styles of the control layouts. It's like a it's almost like it's a prototype or something.

It's like they you know, they the industrial design people just didn't really finish it off and um, you know the knobs aren't bad. the uh, the button presses. they're all reasonably uh qu. Reasonably good quality as you'd expect, but none of the but buttons are pushable.

They've got no secondary uh, push function on them, which is quite disappointing, but there's extensive uh menu systems. It works identically to the original, um to the standard Tectronics kind of interface and well, that's about it. Bit underwhelmed. really.

One thing I don't like with the interface on this thing is this knob over here. Look, you would think that that was a fifth uh, analog input Channel but it's not. There's the that's the external trigger and then believe it or not, is the horizontal control. It's crazy.

Why are all these knobs exactly the same? These four make them the same. fine, but the horizontal you got to make it bigger and don't put it in the same line like that. That's just crazy. Interface Layout design: I Don't like it.

You would think that this one up here might be your horizontal or something like that, but no, that's your typical soft, um, soft control. uh knob. But and it's exactly the same style, shape, and color as all the rest. The layout is just I don't know who did this.

The work experien student? Eh, enough looking at the scope. Let's take it apart. Much more interesting now. I've got to say that is by far the easiest scope.

I think I've ever taken apart a couple of uh T10 Torx screws there. just take the button off with a pair of pliers. You've got to use the rag there as you saw just so that you don't Mark the uh knob. But apart from that, it was.

uh, it came apart beautifully. And here's the inside of the scope. I'm actually surprised to see two boards here. We've got a board on the back which clearly drives the display.

We'll take a look at that, that and the main baseboard down the bottom here. and a very nice looking Uh power supply from Emerson networks. I Like it. Let's take a look at the Emison power supply here.

Each board is, uh, individually serial numbered. looks like uses high quality components. High quality. uh build.

I Really like it. Um, you get a sense of a real, real big sense of quality. Uh, with this thing. they've got the celastic uh, around all the major uh components in there.

they've doed the elastic in just so. uh, things don't move I Really like it. It uh, uses. Yes, it does actually use a real clunk in mechanical.

uh Main's power switch there and we'll actually, uh, check that it actually draws nothing when you, uh, switch. when you actually switch the thing off. We got caught with that with the agilant. Scopes They were a bit, uh, dodgy in that respect.

drawing 6 Watts Crazy. Anyway, this one draws uh, zero and it's just quite a nice. Supply It's well laid out. you can see the high voltage, um, isolation slots down in there.

Really quite a nice build. Singles sided of course. Um, they still do these boards single sided cuz they're actually cheaper to manufacture. You can save a few uh Cents by doing that.

There's a couple of links in there, but they've laid it out quite well to avoid the links. So it looks like a really good quality power supply with uh, what looks like decent quality components. And they've used 105 C uh Rubicon brand caps and as you can imagine they would be, uh, genuine, they wouldn't be ripoff ones. Tectronics would make sure they uh Source their components from uh, quality from the original manufacturers.

We've got uh, reefer, um uh Main's class. uh Mains class capacitors there. about really the only thing I don't really like is the Um is the solded in um M205 fuse in there. Why couldn't they have just put a socket in there? so if it does blow well, you can just replace it it I don't know I didn't like and if you notice these three To220 packages on the same uh heat sink here, they don't actually use any mounting hardware, no screws or anything like that.

they're actually stuck on with just an an adhesive uh, thermal tape and that's um, that's reasonably common as opposed to say uh, this traditional uh o' 220 device down here which is which is actually strapped onto its heat sink with one of those metal uh bracket straps in there and it's got decent Mau protection on the Main's input as well for surges. And here's a good design aspect to show that they were really thinking the the Main's IEC input connector here. Sure, it's a PCB Mount one which actually saves you on the wiring, which is quite nice, but a lot of people make the mistake of not physically reinforcing that properly. They just rely on the PCB Mount itself, but this one is actually you can see the two screws there actually screw into their own.

uh, standoffs fixed, uh, welded in standoffs on the metal shazzy so they take all the stress when the user actually plugs plugs in and disconnects the IC Mains connector on the top here because if you didn't have those standoffs, then uh, when when the user plugs in the Uh Main's plug into the top like that all of the stress will be transferred onto the PCB and ultimately to the solder joints and flexx the board and all that sort of stuff. But when you add those um fixed anchors like that, you take away all that problem. So they were definitely thinking. Now, curiously, we have this two board construction I Find that rather unusual? Uh I Expected a single board construction for a scope like this just to um just to reduce the complexity because as you can see, you've got to have this Uh wiring loom going across here which is an extra ST step extra cost.

You got to buy decent quality connectors. You got to put these Ferite Uh beads in here. As they've done, you got to uh, add manual steps to actually cable tie the things down. It just adds a fair bit of complexity there.

and they've got another one over here which is again, cable tie. There's no Ferite um beads on that. So obviously this because it's got the Ferite uh beads on here. That means that that's actually transferring all of the uh, high frequency uh, the high frequency data for for the display um itself.

So it's going from the main processor on the main board down here up to this Fpga and uh and display memory up on this board. So let's take a closer look at that. So here's the display board and uh, not terribly surprising at all. apart from that they have actually mounted it on a separate Um board in itself, it's got a Zyink Spartan 3 Fpga No surprises there with its own display memory from IDT uh, no surprises there at all.

Uh, this is obviously a DC Todc converter that goes up there and that goes off to presumably Drive the Uh display backlight, the high voltage backlight, and uh, there's probably a DC to DC converter there, which Powers um, some of the core in the Fpga I'm sure they most likely don't get the Uh core voltage directly from the main board, and really, that's about all you'd expect. That's probably the Um, the boot up Um flash for the Xyl linkx Spartan and not much else really for and there you go. We've taken off the Uh front panel assembly I had to remove all the knobs there and a couple of screws on the back, but it all came apart fairly easily. And there's the Uh membrane um uh, rubberized uh keypad on the front that that can just uh, pop out if you want it to where they've got two contacts per Um per switch for reliability I am presuming and that's just all one big molder piece.

And then we have the main board here, which Uh has all of rotary encoder knobs on it. and uh, that looks quite nice. And here's our main board. Let's take a look at it.

The first thing I noticed is that the Um analog input circuitry doesn't have a complete metal shield on it. It's only got these uh, these little uh shield in uh, walls here like that around part of that. Now most um, this is a 200 MHz analog scope, so most um Scopes in that category will have even lower end categories will have a metal can there. So I'm not sure why they've actually done that I guess they deem it not they don't actually require it anyway.

Uh, let's take a look at um, some more aspects of it. There's two main Asic up here. clearly because it's a four. I I presume they're Asic I don't actually recognize the Uh number of them at all.

It's a V42 Adg 52 I Don't really know that it doesn't uh, ring a bell, but they've got some uh, they've obviously got some uh, that looks like Dam there. They've got some um, high-speed IDT memory there and there and the analog input parts are national, uh semiconductor parts now. uh, curiously. here's the Uh battery for the real time clock and look, they've got a really, um, an oldfashioned so package.

uh, real time Dallas semiconductor realtime clock over here. It's quite nice. uh, compared to most of the stuff. Although, you've got some Um standard so packages is over here.

but um, some of the stuff is, uh, you know, reasonably. um, old school, uh, packaging. And now let's take a look at the analog input circuitry here. Now we've got Uh Two National Semiconductor Parts I don't know those off hand? um I'd have to look those up whether or not they're custom or they're um, off the-shelf off the shelf devices now.

Um, this one is a 200 MHz bandwidth, but there are lower models, so I'm not sure I presume it's only a software difference like in the Ryall and many other scopes on the market. To actually, uh, get the different bandwidth. or possibly the 200 MHz one might be different to the 100 MHz model or something like that perhaps. And obviously, and obviously, the other channel is exactly identical.

We've got some uh trigger. Well, there's not much in the way of trigger circuitry over here for the external uh trigger device. and uh, there's a closeup of the main one of the main Asic devices there. and uh, they've got this expansion header up here and I'm not sure what that's uh, doing, whether or not that's for some.

um I don't know logic and mixed signal version I'm not sure they don't have a mixed signal version in the 2000. uh Series so go figure. I'm not sure what's going on here. Um, this looks like a processor for the USB and perhaps, uh, for the whole unit itself itself to see that I'd have to actually take uh, the sticker off.

There's the power input with a couple of freestanding voltage. Regulators I'm not a big fan of the freestanding T To220 package they put a probably should have put some silicon on that like they did. uh for the power supply, they've got a Cyprus uh semiconductor part here I believe that's for the uh USB um host down here for the USB key. Uh, that's the uh, that's the scope.

uh, probe, um, compensation. uh pin there. and really, there's not much else. Pretty typical of what you'd expect to find in one of these.

uh, low-end Scopes Most of the magic is done inside these As6 here. there's actually presuma. they're identical chips, so there's there's presumably one per uh two channels like that. So if you bought the two channel one, I'm sure that would just depopulate all of the analog parts that extra memory and that uh AC over there.

So the two channel would be nearly identical to this. Just some cost saving now. and if we flip it over and take a look at the bottom side of the board here, let's take a look at what we've got. Unsurprisingly, there's the uh.

firmware. It's a dead giveaway. That's the flash chip because it's got the firmware sticker on it. Um, and this device here is a uh free scale.

There we go. Is that a 68,000 That looks like an MC 68,000 device to me? which? um I Think if memory serves me correctly, the original TDS series Scopes might have used a 68,000 processor so they may have carried that over. I will have to double check that. but uh, there you go and somehow it's connected into um, well, it's connected into all of the uh stuff behind there those two big um Asic devices up there.

As you can see, they're directly on the top there cuz you can see all the uh vires connecting the bottom of of those BGA devices there and smacking the middle of it is that free scale processor. Now over here, there's a TI part I don't recognize that one off hand. Um, there's some Serpentine uh traces going down there differential pairs. obviously something to do with the let's have a look I don't know something to do with the US USB perhaps up there? I'm not sure and there's some uh shielding um sections like this on the base of both of the analog channels.

but apart from that, not much else on the bottom. Not much doing there. and if we pull this Chip's pants down, let's take a look our TI Max 2 p CLD There you go. Some nice attention to detail here for the backup battery there.

They've actually covered the bottom pins with a sastic so that you can't short it out. Uh, to the shazzy. I presume when you're installing it or when you're servicing it. Very nice.

And the top switch board up here with all the rotor encoders looks like it has a couple of its own processors on there. I'm not going to bother to take that board out. It's uh, not. uh, terribly exciting at all.

Uh, but it looks like, uh, Tectronics have put firmware stickers on all their programmable devices, so that's a dead giveaway. Um, of the devices that actually have, um, firmware or something else built into them and does it work. Unfortunately, we can't tell because the damn thing takes about 30 seconds to boot up. Crazy.

Eh. At least the screen's going there. You go. Still going? Come on.

Hey, hey, we're up there. We go. She works. Beauty See you next time.

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