Tabor WW1071 AWG trouble

[Jeroen Belleman]

I've been trying to load waveforms into a Tabor WW1071
signal generator, without success. I can talk to the
thing over ethernet, sending SCPI commands and reading
back the (few) responses. I have no problem to make it
put out the standard built-in waveforms, but when I try
to load my own waveforms, I get nowhere. Often I even
crash the thing, requiring a power cycle before it will
accept a new TCP connection.

I've tried several code snippets found in the documentation,
piping the data into the AWG through telnet or netcat,
but to no avail. One big problem is that the instrument
returns very little information about its internal state.
Erroneous commands produce no error returns. Comparing it
to similar devices from reputable manufacturers, lots of
commands to read out internal state or data are missing.
It's mostly a write-only black box. It's a shameful piece
of work, really.

Can somebody offer any hints?

Thanks,
Jeroen Belleman

 

[Joerg]

On 2019-07-02 05:51, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

I've been trying to load waveforms into a Tabor WW1071
signal generator, without success. I can talk to the
thing over ethernet, sending SCPI commands and reading
back the (few) responses. I have no problem to make it
put out the standard built-in waveforms, but when I try
to load my own waveforms, I get nowhere. Often I even
crash the thing, requiring a power cycle before it will
accept a new TCP connection.

I've tried several code snippets found in the documentation,
piping the data into the AWG through telnet or netcat,
but to no avail. One big problem is that the instrument
returns very little information about its internal state.
Erroneous commands produce no error returns. Comparing it
to similar devices from reputable manufacturers, lots of
commands to read out internal state or data are missing.
It's mostly a write-only black box. It's a shameful piece
of work, really.

Can somebody offer any hints?

Have you contacted them about it?

They have a ton of documents so you have to become a sort of ownwer's
club member to get them:

https://www.taborelec.com/ww1071

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Winfield Hill]

Jeroen Belleman wrote...

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

Should that matter? It's supposed to work as stated, no?
I won't touch the firmware unless there's an imperative
to do so, and probably not even then. I'm more likely to
solve my problem without that box then.

Jeroen, don't be weird. Of course you want the
version with all the software fixed. For most
of us, it's one of the first things we do.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

Joerg wrote:

On 2019-07-02 05:51, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
I've been trying to load waveforms into a Tabor WW1071
signal generator, without success. I can talk to the
thing over ethernet, sending SCPI commands and reading
back the (few) responses. I have no problem to make it
put out the standard built-in waveforms, but when I try
to load my own waveforms, I get nowhere. Often I even
crash the thing, requiring a power cycle before it will
accept a new TCP connection.

I've tried several code snippets found in the documentation,
piping the data into the AWG through telnet or netcat,
but to no avail. One big problem is that the instrument
returns very little information about its internal state.
Erroneous commands produce no error returns. Comparing it
to similar devices from reputable manufacturers, lots of
commands to read out internal state or data are missing.
It's mostly a write-only black box. It's a shameful piece
of work, really.

Can somebody offer any hints?


Have you contacted them about it?

No, I didn't. I might try it yet, but I expect them to
tell me to RTFM.

They have a ton of documents so you have to become a sort of ownwer's
club member to get them:

https://www.taborelec.com/ww1071

Yes, another site that wants you to sell your soul in
exchange for docs. I have the docs. I even read them.

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

Should that matter? It's supposed to work as stated, no?
I won't touch the firmware unless there's an imperative
to do so, and probably not even then. I'm more likely to
solve my problem without that box then.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Don Kuenz]

Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com> wrote:

Jeroen Belleman wrote...

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

Should that matter? It's supposed to work as stated, no?
I won't touch the firmware unless there's an imperative
to do so, and probably not even then. I'm more likely to
solve my problem without that box then.

Jeroen, don't be weird. Of course you want the
version with all the software fixed. For most
of us, it's one of the first things we do.

Speaking as someone who's successfully updated the firmware of thousands
of various devices, this is generally good advice. In the interest of
full disclosure, the slight risk that a firmware update will brick a
device must also be noted.
Fortunately, in the few cases where a firmware update bricked a
device on me, either a chip or a board replacement resurrected the
device most of the time. Keep in mind that it's harder to find parts
for exotic devices on ebay.
"Exotic" in this case is self-referential. If it's not available on
ebay it's exotic by definition.

Thank you, 73,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2019-07-02 18:29, Don Kuenz wrote:

Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com> wrote:
Jeroen Belleman wrote...

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

Should that matter? It's supposed to work as stated, no?
I won't touch the firmware unless there's an imperative
to do so, and probably not even then. I'm more likely to
solve my problem without that box then.

Jeroen, don't be weird. Of course you want the
version with all the software fixed. For most
of us, it's one of the first things we do.

Speaking as someone who's successfully updated the firmware of thousands
of various devices, this is generally good advice. In the interest of
full disclosure, the slight risk that a firmware update will brick a
device must also be noted.
Fortunately, in the few cases where a firmware update bricked a
device on me, either a chip or a board replacement resurrected the
device most of the time. Keep in mind that it's harder to find parts
for exotic devices on ebay.
"Exotic" in this case is self-referential. If it's not available on
ebay it's exotic by definition.

Thank you, 73,

But this is preposterous! The device is sold as an AWG. If that
functionality isn't available as sold, it's *broken* and should
never have been sold as such! There may be new functionality or
subtle bug fixes in an upgrade, but something as basic as this
should work.

I found that it wants a bit of delay between commands, which it
doesn't get when I pipe a prepared file of commands and data
into it. The manual doesn't say so and the TCP protocol is supposed
to protect against that, so that's a bug. OK, I can work around
that, but it doesn't seem to be the whole story.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Joerg]

On 2019-07-02 13:48, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2019-07-02 18:29, Don Kuenz wrote:
Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com> wrote:
Jeroen Belleman wrote...

Last firmware update was 2010. Is yours up to date?

Should that matter? It's supposed to work as stated, no?
I won't touch the firmware unless there's an imperative
to do so, and probably not even then. I'm more likely to
solve my problem without that box then.

Jeroen, don't be weird. Of course you want the
version with all the software fixed. For most
of us, it's one of the first things we do.

Speaking as someone who's successfully updated the firmware of thousands
of various devices, this is generally good advice. In the interest of
full disclosure, the slight risk that a firmware update will brick a
device must also be noted.
Fortunately, in the few cases where a firmware update bricked a
device on me, either a chip or a board replacement resurrected the
device most of the time. Keep in mind that it's harder to find parts
for exotic devices on ebay.
"Exotic" in this case is self-referential. If it's not available on
ebay it's exotic by definition.

Thank you, 73,


But this is preposterous! The device is sold as an AWG. If that
functionality isn't available as sold, it's *broken* and should
never have been sold as such! There may be new functionality or
subtle bug fixes in an upgrade, but something as basic as this
should work.

It's normal, at least these days. A typical scenario would be that a
boss is breathing down the engineer's neck to "get it done, soon". Then
it is all released to production in a hurry and later there is an oops
discovered here and there. Hence, if someone gets stuck like you did a
firmware update would be the first thing I'd do if it's a newer version
than you have.

Granted I didn't do that (yet) for a digital scope here but that's
because it works well enough for the jobs I need it for.

An example of the benefits of SW updates: Until it died during a Linux
install a month ago my wife had a little Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop. It
was always sluggish with video playback. Several years after (!) Dell
terminated production of this laptop a new graphics driver came out for
the by then rather old graphics IC. It was like a flood gate opening,
suddenly video worked very smoothly and fast.

I found that it wants a bit of delay between commands, which it
doesn't get when I pipe a prepared file of commands and data
into it. The manual doesn't say so and the TCP protocol is supposed
to protect against that, so that's a bug. OK, I can work around
that, but it doesn't seem to be the whole story.

Since you own one of their devices it makes sense to register on the
site. That way they can notify you when there are issues or when a new
firmware is available. It also can't hurt to contact them via email or
phone. Most likely someone else had similar problems and maybe they know
a solution.

Yeah, they might pester you with marketing campaigns but one can mostly
opt out of that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/