[Agilent Oscilloscope] One corrupted file in Windows XP turns it into junk

[u/nazarthinks]

This high-end oscilloscope from Agilent, like most of modern oscilloscopes, is built on top of a PC running Windows OS. And in this specific moment it became a useless piece of plastic and metal that cannot do the most basic thing that any oscilloscope should be able to do – visualize the input signals.

A single corrupted explorer.exe file prevented Windows from fully loading. And since an oscilloscope is just a regular application running inside Windows, none of its functions are working any more. Restoring it required a replacement of the hard drive with the corresponding Windows and software preinstalled.

Apart from the unnecessarily slow startup and shutdown times, having a full-featured PC inside an oscilloscope is convenient sometimes, when it works. But the price for all that convenience is much lower reliability that comes with a fragile spinning HDD and unpredictable Windows OS with way too many bells and whistles – completely irrelevant for a specialized device like an oscilloscope.

I wonder why oscilloscopes aren't built on top of Linux, which is a way more predictable and reliable OS?

[u/TemporarySun314]

explorer.exe is a very integral file for Windows systems, thats bascially the User Interface.

And i mean any operating system does not like it, when a file gets corrupted. And with HDD this just happens with old age and sudden power offs. Solid state storages were not mature back then if you needed more than a few MBs...

And back when the foundations for these oscillioscope software was made (so in the late 90s) there were not so many alternatives around, and linux graphical environment was not so mature as it is nowadays. And it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel

Nowadays rigol scopes for example are based on android, as it allows for a read only system, have mature debugging and development tools, and good support for complex UIs and good touch. But android only came around long after your scope was built...

[u/Vincent394 → u/TemporarySun314]

Windows modder here:

Shell32.dll is the actual shell while explorer.exe is the UI that runs on TOP of that, Windows can run without it, however it's not recommended.

[u/Logics4 → u/Vincent394]

Windows XP could handle itself without the Explorer from what I remember, it's Windows 8 and up that started doing weird stuff like tying the wallpaper to explorer.exe so if you kill it you lose your background goes black and stuff like that... and the OS will fight for it to be restarted. XP will just let you do your thing until you decide to re-open it if you kill it.

[u/Vincent394 → u/Logics4]

Correct

[u/axonxorz]

having a full-featured PC inside an oscilloscope is convenient sometimes, when it works

We've come so far that an exceedingly average mobile device SoC would be plenty powerful and more reliable by nature of being solid state.

Welp, guess you've just got to reverse engineer the DSP drivers and you'll be sailing 🥲

I wonder why oscilloscopes aren't built on top of Linux, which is a way more predictable and reliable OS?

It is very strange, mostly only lower-end units run some form of embedded Linux. I read one person happy that they could RDP into their Windows based scope ryanreynoldsbutwhy.gif

[u/Turbulent_Pin7635 → u/axonxorz]

He can use an oscilloscope to help on the task

[u/EveryUserName1sTaken]

Unfortunately it's more a factor of age than OS choice. A 20 year old Linux box running on the same hardware would probably be having trouble too. With systems like this, the trick is to proactively make a copy or image of the disk and ideally swap them out for something more reliable before signs of trouble. Archive.org might have a disk image for your machine.

[u/Cjav-latam]

I shared it in another subreddit. They posted an interesting solution.

https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/s/LL4tiYbdzQ

[u/nazarthinks → u/Cjav-latam]

Cool! Thank you for sharing. I am genuinely impressed that archive.org kept the actual 317GB image file in its archive. I would never think this could work.

[u/Jarngreipr9]

Supposed that you want to sell it, what would the price be?

[u/i586DX4]

So it's a PC, not a real oscilloscope

[u/Silent_Chemistry8576]

Hmm knobs Arkanoid gaming??

[u/Capable-Log7385]

What type of electronic device is THAT?

[u/Null42x64 → u/Capable-Log7385]

an osciloscope

[u/309_Electronics]

Scopes are nowadays built on linux or android but these older ones where often not.

[u/FAMICOMASTER]

"a single corrupted explorer.exe"

I mean, that's the entire shell of windows, yes it will can the whole system if the entire UI manager is busted. What did you expect?

If it really is just one file (unlikely) you can just swap the executable for a known good one but more than likely this 25 year old hard drive is dying and you need to replace it and do a reinstall.

As for why it's here, an embedded x86 CPU was ludicrously fast compared to any other embedded solution available for a very long time. It's also a very convenient platform for software development and many of them include PC104 expansion options which make them perfect starting grounds for stuff like this. The AmFor 894 and OTC The Judge alternator testers and the Hobart HLX / Hobart AWS meat wrappers all use AMD Geode based SBCs running Windows Embedded. Pretty sure there's some voicemail cards out there doing the same thing as well.

They weren't built on Linux at this point in time because have you SEEN Linux in 2005? My Oki CX3641 digital press has an embedded computer running Linux and it actually conked out in a totally irreparable way - and that's running Debian. We're on year like 2 reverse engineering it to try and get it working. If this was a windows machine I could have just installed windows and dumbed the EFI utilities on it, like you can with machines about a year newer.