Rigol DS1052E 50MHz to 100MHz scope hack

Hack a Day posted yesterday that a guy named Ross turned his 50MHz Rigol DS1052E into a 100MHz capable instrument by removing part of a lowpass filter on the analog inputs.

I think it remains to be seen whether there are any other mods required to make this work like a real DS1102E (ie. does the 1052E firmware limit the minimum horizontal timescale?) but this is hardware hacking at its finest!

Read more about it on the EEVblog forums.

8 thoughts on “Rigol DS1052E 50MHz to 100MHz scope hack”

  1. Jeff,

    Thanks, I have read that blog.

    At any case it seems like DS1022C (BTW, it is older and cheaper) has another “right way” (or has not it at all). Say, :INFO:MODEL? returns nothing, ‘:IO:TEST ABC’ also returns nothing (*IDN?, :INFO:SERIAL? do work – so connection is OK).

  2. Anli – I am not aware of a hack for the DS1022C. I don’t know if the same weakness in the 1052E applies to any other scopes. I think the DS1052E was the first target because it is common and cheap.

    More info about the software hack is here:
    http://oreskovic.me/wp/?p=27

  3. I have tried this software hack with DS1022C without success. Does it mean there isn’t a way to apply the hack to this model?

  4. Here is the detail for you.
    Connect a straight through serial cable to scope and computer.

    Open up a terminal program on the PC, set to 9600 baud 8 data bits, no parity,1 stop bit, no flow control, set it to echo back what you type and send only Linefeeds.

    to test coms send :IO:TEST testing
    it should come back with “testing”

    great, now to hack your scope

    :INFO:MODEL DS1102E

    1. OOPS, HIT THE SUBMIT BEFORE I WAS FINISHED!

      Here is the rest

      No change the serial (X is your own serial)
      :INFO:SERIAL DS1EBXXXXXXXXX

      Switch off the scope then back on and calibrate.

      Job Done, you now have a 100Mhz DS1102E

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