The highlights of my journey were as follows:
If you¡¯re considering a 70000 MMS SA for wideband phase noise measurement, a 70900A LO won¡¯t work, or at least not with whatever software version mine had. Mine with a 70900B worked fine.
the E1430A VXI ADC is on the supported hardware list for E550xA systems, but does not work. It doesn¡¯t matter if you¡¯re using MXI-2 or FireWire VXI bridges to a host PC. The hardware is seen, the soft front panel is grayed out.
The E1437A I haven¡¯t physically had one of to test, but a guy in France did have one he never got working either.
The E5504B systems use an NI PCI6111 digitizer card, with a specific module on it that I don¡¯t recall the part number of at the moment. The adapter on the back just provides shielded cable connections with presumably low pass filters.
I haven¡¯t tried the NI PCI digitizer card, because at the time I could buy an 89410A or even a whole 89441A for less than the $800+ the PCI card showed in sold items history.
The original install CDs for the E5500 are something I¡¯ve never laid my hands on. Within them, there may be special drivers or support libraries necessary to make the NI PCI card actually work. The NI directories on the CD likely contain a necessary dependency for the E1430/E1437 digitizer to work as well.
I¡¯d be very interested if anyone has an original install CD or a CD image for E5500 systems.
I¡¯d recommend an 89410A as the analog front end unless you already own one of the other supported FFT analyzers(3561/3582).
Even if you have a 3561 or 3582 you might want to consider the impact of 100KHz or 25KHz vs 25.6MHz of an 89410A sample rate and the impact on measurement time for close in phase noise. Since the DUT and references all have their own phase noise, beyond a certain measurement time, the time alone may limit noise floor.
Moving on to software¡
The ¡°old¡± windows 7 and lower software is 32 bit only. If you install in a 64 bit system you¡¯re limited to viewer functionality only. The licensing is based on your test set serial number. Keysight has a help article out there with a generic key for test set serial number 0000A00000 and resetting the test set serial number is east. To install the software, you¡¯ll need the pre-requisites bundle and the latest software bundle.
The new software is W10 officially(probably will install fine in W11) and 64 bit only. It uses host based licensing.
1st generation ISA system with probably windows NT 4.0 and a no longer supported ISA digitizer card
2nd generation windows 7 32 bit, 2U rack mount, GPIB card and digitizer card lay parallel to motherboard
3rd generation windows 10 64 bit, Kontron 4U rack mount PC with cards standing up.
For E550xB systems, there were 3 generations of PCs they supplied:
1st generation ISA system with probably windows NT 4.0 and a no longer supported ISA digitizer card
2nd generation windows 7 32 bit, 2U rack mount, GPIB card and digitizer card lay parallel to motherboard
3rd generation windows 10 64 bit, Kontron 4U rack mount PC with cards standing up.
4th generation PXIe used a 4 slot wide embedded windows controller in a mainframe holding a digitizer with FPGA Hardware and phase detector(s) cards.
Based on several inquiries over more than a year with Keysight, I¡¯ve run into a hard wall with respect to licensing for the W10+ software.
As near as I can tell, support can probably retrieve previously issued licenses, but generating a new license has to go through manufacturing.
I have no idea if there¡¯s software automation that prevents issuance of a new key, or corporate policy that will NOT be violated¡but a system serial number or sales order number to look up the system serial number is what they require.
Anyway, that means piecing together a PCIe frame even with only the widows embedded controller is a dead end unless you¡¯re sure your frame has a system serial number on it.
I did get the impression since this is keyed off the system serial number that you could supply a different host ID for your board if you replaced a failing one. Being they may be expecting a Kontron board with a specific number of digits not just any board might do trying to build up a system with hopes of getting a license.
A best case scenario would be figuring out how to get Keysight to generate a $0 sales order (or some nominal fee affordable for an individual not using a company checkbook) and maybe getting the system serial number for the test set assigned as an E550xA upgrade. Being they can no longer sell a windows 10 3rd generation system, as components are no longer available, they¡¯re not as risk of losing revenue. Maybe the right person can find a way, but I haven¡¯t found them yet. If you do get this far, you¡¯d need to make sure your license includes LTUs for ever piece in your system, and might as well make sure it supports upgrades.
And finally the last topic:
What tunable reference (signal generator) you use matters because from bad to good to excellent, at say 1/1k/10k/100k there¡¯s probably at least a 30-40db improvement even ignoring what your intentions are for wideband measurement.
In my system, based on cost, I used a non-HP generator that cost me at least $1000 less than a comparable HP.
a few final thoughts:
When ¡°systems¡± are being advertised, make sure you understand exactly what a system includes. A test set + computer certainly isn¡¯t all you need, nor is it necessarily false advertising. You just need lots of extra parts to make a useful instrument.
If a ¡°system¡± is supplied with a computer, consider utility of what said computer will be whether that computer is serviceable or not.
To me this is a perfect case for right to repair and highlighting all of the problems with licensing¡.being unable to upgrade hardware to something on my own with no support from the company to be able to run an OS for which security patches are available is a problem. I¡¯d even like to say the overall pattern is a problem for national security. Maybe someday I¡¯ll find some people in congress that will be in a mood to put some exceptions in place to carve outs industries lobbied for.
The latest 64 bit software if you extract pieces from the installer actually still supports or appears to support using an external FFT analyzer and the older hardware even though it was designed for the newer AXIe chassis.
In principle, the 32 bit software should be able to run on 64 bit system, but the installers are broken in ways that prevent doing that directly. I haven¡¯t had time lately, due to work, to revisit that and seeing if I can build a new installer with 64 bit support or a mix of 32 and 64 bit dependencies to install on 64 bit only.
Dave McGuire
bownes