Turn your Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope into a 100MHz DS1102E

[Phil Allison]

"Dyna Soar"
" Farkin Larkin "

Dave is an Australian, living in Australia. Why would (or should) he care
about US law?

** His video presentation breaks no law in either place.

That's bullshit. How can you vandalise something you legally own?

** Precisely.

But FJ is alluding to the possible effect on Rigol's sales of their phoney
100MHz version.

Why not? He seems to not be breaking any Australian law. Why does he
have to justify himself to you particularly regarding the laws of another
country?

** His video presentation breaks no law in either place.

FJ claim to the contrary is entirely RIDICULOUS !!

Your questioning him demonstrates your arrogance towards a law abiding
citizen of another country.

** What is REALLY demonstrates is that FJ has done something with one of his
designs that is close enough to the Rigol case for ** HIM ** to feel
very confronted by Dave's video presentation.

IOW - a clear case of guilty conscience induced paranoia.

IOW - the fool protesteth far too bloody much.



..... Phil

 

[F Murtz]

What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue
[...]

The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.

If I bought a house, and it included an extra bedroom that wasn't
advertised and was padlocked shut, I wouldn't feel guilty breaking the
padlock in the least. Would you?

No. But that costs the seller nothing, and is perfectly legal. Jones
has cost Rigel a lot, now and in the future. And the way he did it is
probably criminal conspiracy to commit a computer crime, by US law at
least.

So, why did he do it, specifically why did he post a video showing the
whole world how to do it? He had to know it would cost Rigel real
revenue, and must have decided that they didn't deserve that revenue.

Jones? Why?

John

I would not mind betting that they make more revenue, not less as a
result of this discussion.

 

[F Murtz]

If it's, say, 100 scopes hacked at a loss of $400 each, until Rigol
makes the firmware more secure (which will also cost money to do)
that's $40K. I don't know if $40K is "serious" money that matters to
Rigol, or to you. $40K is fairly serious to me.

It would probably be 100 scopes that they would not have sold normally
to people who would not buy the 100MHz one anyway.

 

[JosephKK]

For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a
100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable:

Dave.

Amazing and amusing. Nice to know. I think i will get a 1052. Though i
probably will not mod it. There may be other less obvious differences,
like selected parts in the input attenuators, and selected diodes in the
sampler. Not all mod results may be so pleasing. Though it does make
me wonder about getting it to go even faster.

 

[JosephKK]

Oddly enough, this technique is quite frequent, though, the selling
technique is more transparent, unlike Rigol who intentionally obscures
the similarities.



One that comes to mind are multi-processor mainframe computers that are
sold fully kitted out, but only enable the number of processors the
customer pays for.

The idea is, you have the entire box delivered, you *know* it's the
fully populated box, you call them and say you want x processors
enabled, and you pay accordingly. They connect remotely, and using
complex encrypted communications, your box is reconfigured: Almost
instantly you have the performance you paid for.

There is a risk to the vendor, who forks out for the entire box and
have clients who never pay for all of it. But it's not all bad, this
results in possible lock-in (depending on product) guaranteeing further
income from clients that would have considered moving in the future, AND
it gets YOUR brand name out there in the market, which is always good news.



Likewise, where I used to work, when questioned about the quite
significant price difference between our lower-speced and higher-speced
acoustic products. We tell the client the control circuitry is
*exactly* the same, and the difference is in the cost of the microphone,
and show them the price list in case they were interested.
If they wanted to upgrade (or downgrade), just swap microphones, make
relevant adjustments, and re-calibrate the instrument, and that's it.
The entire process was transparent.



How is this different from the Rigol situation? Three points:

Firstly, they have ADDED circuitry to hinder native performance, verses
include, or enable circuitry (or firmware/software) to improve performance.

No, they haven't. The 20 MHz bandwidth limiter is common to both scopes
and is plainly documented; some find it useful. Using it to produce two
models differentiated by bandwidth was perhaps too clever.

Secondly, they've intentionally obscured this fact (exact same hardware
and firmware), by making it look like two different products.

And lastly, possibly worst of all, they've made it this easy to hack.

This one is the real problem. A mere password could have stopped this.

 

[Andrew]

Rigol did the engineering and selected a business model, and you chose
to break it based on some moral judgement of your own. They will have
to react somehow, which will cost them money one way or another.

Why did you do this? Did you feel that Rigol was cheating the public
and deserved to be exposed and, additionally, deprived of revenue?

John

He exercised his right of free speech. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[markp]

If you mean that I sell products that have different firmware, or
different features enabled, at different prices, yes I do. So does
practically everybody who sells IP-intensive products. Firmware is
expensive to develop and maintain, has value, so commands a price.
More and more products are becoming cookbook uP or FPGA designs whose
real value is the code.

Consider a PCB layout program that's limited as to layer or part count
or functions. Send them lots of money and they email you a key to
remove some of those limits. Their low-cost product is the same as
their high-end, except that they have *added* code to disable
features. Same thing.

John

Except with software you agree to a EULA prohibiting you from doing that
yourself. No such agreement exists when purchasing a scope from eBay, hence
it is "not illegal" to do so unless you were intending to defraud (you were
the one who suggested not being illegal trumps the moral argument over
over-clocking ADCs).

Mark.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:49:53 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

It may be illegal to use a computer to hack firmware if it
deprives the IP owner of revenue.

There in lies your problem; prior publication. The IP owner has nil
chance of proving that his IP doesn't rely on someone else's IP. That is
how the whole process of technical development has taken place. The
concept that some brilliant individual created something new is 99%
bullshit. I've never met any programmer who is totally self taught
without recourse to any example(someone else's IP).

In US patent law, there's a strong presumption that any granted patent
is valid. That's supposed to be what the USPTO does for a living. (I
know, I know.)

Thus it's up to the alleged infringer to prove the patent invalid, and
that's one of the forms the defense always takes. In a patent suit,
each side has to provide a couple of reports to the other, containing
the arguments they intend to present at trial and the evidence they
intend to use. (It's actually a pretty good system in its
way--otherwise more cases would be wrongly decided due to the good guys
[whichever side that is] getting blindsided at the trial.)

"Discovery" as it's called in the US and Canada is an essential part
of the civil law process. Typically there can't be a serious attempt
to settle a lawsuit until all the actual evidence on both sides that
could appear at trial has been seen by everyone. That's the theory
anyhow-- it's rather gamed in practice, IME.

Hypothetically, what would happen if there were no patent or copyright
laws?

John

A lot of people would be employed differently. It might be better, all
told, if monopolies of arbitrary duration were not imposed by
governments. Consumer labeling laws (much as we have now) could deal
with a lot of the confusion that would arise. Software companies would
have to sell service and/or lock their software so it called home or
used a dongle if they wanted to get paid for it. Would open-source
software be more available or less available under those conditions?

 

[Jon Kirwan]

In US patent law, there's a strong presumption that any granted patent
is valid. That's supposed to be what the USPTO does for a living. (I
know, I know.)
<snip>

My patent attorney, years ago, informed me that the strength
of this presumption varies by patent court region. In some,
it's almost a 50/50 push. In others, it is very much like
you say here.

Jon

 

[keithr]

There is no deception, you pay for a 50MHz unit, you get a 50 MHz unit,
pay for a 100MHz unit and that is just what you get.

The fact that they are functionally similar doesn't mean that they are
equivalent. It is entirely possible that Rogol select the 100MHz units
on the basis of performance. This is common in the semiconductor
industry where they select the best units to be sold at a premium. They
usually only expect a certain percentage to pass and stop testing once
that has been met, so you may get an ordinary product that actually
performs as a premium one. It may be that Dave was lucky with his, and
others may not perform as well

Oddly enough, this technique is quite frequent, though, the selling
technique is more transparent, unlike Rigol who intentionally obscures
the similarities.

I see no reason that they should, you get what you paid for, how they
achieve that is their own business. If you can get around the system,
that is your good luck and their bad luck.

One that comes to mind are multi-processor mainframe computers that are
sold fully kitted out, but only enable the number of processors the
customer pays for.

The idea is, you have the entire box delivered, you *know* it's the
fully populated box, you call them and say you want x processors
enabled, and you pay accordingly. They connect remotely, and using
complex encrypted communications, your box is reconfigured: Almost
instantly you have the performance you paid for.

There is a risk to the vendor, who forks out for the entire box and
have clients who never pay for all of it. But it's not all bad, this
results in possible lock-in (depending on product) guaranteeing further
income from clients that would have considered moving in the future, AND
it gets YOUR brand name out there in the market, which is always good news.

Certainly not uncommon also known to happen with storage units coming
fully populated with drives.

Likewise, where I used to work, when questioned about the quite
significant price difference between our lower-speced and higher-speced
acoustic products. We tell the client the control circuitry is
*exactly* the same, and the difference is in the cost of the microphone,
and show them the price list in case they were interested.
If they wanted to upgrade (or downgrade), just swap microphones, make
relevant adjustments, and re-calibrate the instrument, and that's it.
The entire process was transparent.



How is this different from the Rigol situation? Three points:

Firstly, they have ADDED circuitry to hinder native performance, verses
include, or enable circuitry (or firmware/software) to improve performance.

That is not that uncommon either. Eons ago I worked for a computer
company that had a range of 3 machines. All of them were identical
except for one module, in the fastest model, it was just a straight pass
through, in the slower models extra gates were added to delay memory
references. It was a 6 figure upgrade that took 60 seconds to do but the
point was that the extra expense gave a guarantee that the machine would
perform at the higher speed.

Secondly, they've intentionally obscured this fact (exact same hardware
and firmware), by making it look like two different products.

In these days when virtually everything has a microcontroller at it's
heart, I suspect that you could find dozens of similar situations where
a value stored in the firmware defines the functionality. Look on the
internet and you'll find similar hacks for everything from disposable
cameras to region free DVD players.

And lastly, possibly worst of all, they've made it this easy to hack.

Thats either laziness or arrogance by the firmware programmers. It is so
easy to prevent that I see no reason not to do so.

 

[keithr]

Are you really that ignorant? So I create a 100Mhz scope and sale it for
X dollars as a 100Mhz scope. I then slap a new sticker on the 100Mhz
scope and call it a 50Mhz scope and sale it for Y dollars.

Now, if my profit margins for the 100Mhz scope was not that high then
how could I make profit on the "new" 50Mhz scope? Either they jacked up
the profit margin significantly to be able to do this trick or they are
making virtually no profit on the 50Mhz scope.

BUT! If they are making no profit on the 50Mhz scope then why not just
reduce the price of the 100Mhz scope in the first place?

They are exactly trying to simply get into a market that the 100Mhz
scope can't because of it's higher price. They can lower the price,
pretend it's a crappier version and then increase their market size for
three reasons. Those that can't and never will buy the 100Mhz version
but will buy the 50Mhz and those that are lured in by the 50Mhz version
and decide "I might as well get the 100Mhz version since it's just a
"little more"". Also those that buy the 50Mhz version may decide to buy
the more powerful one as an "upgrade"... which in fact there is no real
upgrade involved.

The dishonesty is in the tactics they use and tells you a lot about what
they think of their customers. This, of course, is not a new trick.

The dishonesty part is equivalent to lying. If you called them and asked
them about it do you really think they will tell you they are exactly
the same hardware with just a firmware change to cripple the cheaper
version?

You can hide behind the cloak of capitalism all you want but this is not
capitalism but outright theft.

How do we know you are wrong and I'm right? Very easily... call up rigol
and ask them about the difference between the models. If they are honest
they will tell you there is only a firmware difference. If they are
dishonest they will make up something that we already know is false. The
street name for this kinda shit is lying. You may be confused by the big
word dishonesty but maybe one day you'll figure it out.

Of course this is not necessarily criminal but is walking the fine line.
An ethical company would not implement such practices. I don't know
about you(well, I guess I do) but I'd rather do business with a company
that isn't out to screw me.

They are screwing you how? It isn't like they are selling you a 50MHz
unit for the price of a 100MHz one, but rather the other way around.
They obviously could sell the 100MHz unit much cheaper but that is
commercial decision that they took presumably based on what the rival
units cost.

Its in your hands, if you think that the price for the 100MHz unit is
too high, then don't buy it, go to another manufacturer. I haven't
looked at the prices for 100 MHz units, but I suspect that Rogol's price
is in line with it's rivals otherwise they wouldn't be selling any.

Personally, I'll stick to my ancient 250MHz Tektronix that cost me less
than half the price of a Rogol.

 

[keithr]

No, the firmware is identical in both models. They simply enter in whatever
model number at final assembly via serial or USB and the firmware detects
that and switches the I/O line that turns on/off the 50MHz filter. It also
limits the displayed timebase to 5ns instead of 2ns. All other specs are
idential.

Has anybody done a bit by it comparison between firmware in the 50MHz
unit and the 100MHz unit to confirm this?

 

[fritz]

Has anybody done a bit by it comparison between firmware in the 50MHz unit
and the 100MHz unit to confirm this?

Probably not because it is bleedingly obvious that it was IDENTICAL from the
simplicity of the hack that has been explained in detail. If you have
actually
looked at the eevblog and are still asking this question then you are a bit
thick.
Also, Rigol have apparently reacted and changed the firmware to stop
the simple hack. So all roads lead to Rome, so to speak.

 

[keithr]

On Mar 30, 8:03 pm, John Larkin
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:29:12 +1100, "David L. Jones"

For those with a Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope, you can now turn it into a
100MHz DS1102E with just a serial cable:

Dave.
What you have done is possibly a criminal act in the USA, using a
computer to deprive Rigol of revenue. In the US, "using a computer" to
perform an act can be a much more severe crime than the act itself.

I have some sympathy for Rigol here. Many of our products have an
option that can be enabled in firmware, and that we charge for. We put
a lot of engineering effort into the firmware, and need to be paid for
it. If buyers of my gear can order the cheaper one and make it into
the expensive one, by copying an EPROM maybe, or setting a bit in
flash somewhere, I can't recover the cost of the feature. The act is
arguably legal theft. It's certainly moral theft.

Products are increasingly IP and less hardware these days, and the IP
is expensive.

Of course, Rigol made it too easy. They will probably go back and make
it harder to do, and that will make the scope cost more in both
versions.

I recently got a 1052E, and it's a pretty nice scope. The digital
filtering is not perfect, but it's sure cute. It has way more goodies
than a comparable Tek for under half the price. I'll probably get a
few more.

John
The design cost is amortized over all the units. [Hey, don't worry
what the consults charges, it will go to zero as we sell a million
units.]

Rigol does themselves a disservice by having to maintain two
products. They should just sell the higher speed scope, bomb the
market, and then own it.

It's also very dishonest and goes to show why humanity will never make it
very far. People like Larkin are too arrogant to understand this. Do you
think people would buy their products if they knew that the only difference
between the low end and high end versions is the price? At the very least
they could have added some true functional improvement that made it
justifiable but simply changing the model number doesn't justify a 40% price
increase.

People buy the standard and Pro versions of Windows knowing the only
difference is a few flags. Windows consumer versions are brain-damaged
to allow only a small number of network connections at a time, and
cost almost nothing bundled with a PC. Windows Server removes the
limit and costs about $2K.

I'm sure that all sorts of expensive automotive options are just
firmware these days. All sorts of products differ only in theor
firmware.

It's Rigol's choice how to price their products and amortize their
engineering. Buying their 50 MHz scope and hacking it, and gleefully
telling the world how to do it, it is essentially vandalism. Legally,
it may be criminal conspiracy to use a computer to commit a crime.

Hacking your own property is both legally and morally fine. Telling the
world how to do it is more of a grey area but this is only one case of
many. Using that information to buy 50MHz units and sell them on as
100MHz one would probably be a crime.

Just because the US has draconian laws on the subject doesn't mean that
those of us who live in saner parts of the world should have to comply

Jones is perfectly capable of estimating the considerable economic
damage he is doing to Rigol. I suppose he hates Rigol enough that he's
happy about it.

If you spent years writing a book or some software, would you be happy
if people copied it and distributed it for free, cutting off your
rotalties? After all, copies cost almost nothing. Now can you justify
charging $20 for a book or $500 for a program when it costs pennies to
manufacture copies?

Certainly it may affect the sales of their more expensive unit, but, if
they have any sense, they will just drop the 50MHz unit and sell the
100MHz on for the same price or a few dollars more and blitz the market.

 

[Phil Allison]

"keithr"

There is no deception,

** Of course there is you fucking retarded puke.

Buyers are deliberately kept in the dark about the real situation in order
to get them to pay an unjustifiably higher price for the 100MHz model. That
is a deception tantamount to fraud.


..... Phil

 

[keithr]

Yes. What's a fair price for IP that costs nothing to manufacture?

But that costs a lot to develop.

 

[Phil Allison]

"Dyna Soar"
" Farkin Larkin "

Dave is an Australian, living in Australia. Why would (or should) he care
about US law?

** His video presentation breaks NO law in either place.

That's bullshit. How can you vandalise something you legally own?

** Precisely.

But FJ is alluding to the possible effect on Rigol's sales of their phoney
100MHz version.

Why not? He seems to not be breaking any Australian law. Why does he
have to justify himself to you particularly regarding the laws of another
country?

** His video presentation breaks NO law in either place.

FJ's claim to the contrary is entirely RIDICULOUS !!

Your questioning him demonstrates your arrogance towards a law abiding
citizen of another country.

** What is REALLY demonstrates is that FJ has done something with one of his
designs that is close enough to the Rigol case for ** HIM ** to feel
very confronted by Dave's video presentation.

IOW - a clear case of guilty conscience induced paranoia.

IOW - the colossal fool protesteth far too bloody much.



..... Phil

 

[[email protected]]

By all accounts, no, the 100MHz unit is an identical board. People who tried
to examine the hardware front ends (and other parts) could not find any
differences between the two models. That's what originally prompted me to
suggest there was just a component value difference in the models, but of
course as it turns out it's much simpler than that, they are identical. If
they weren't identical, then there would be no need for the software logic
switch to set the 50MHz limit, they'd simply do it with BOM changes.

The sample rate and all other performance features are the same between
units, so there is no need for better or faster ADC's or processor in the
100MHz model.

I thought the 100MHz scope has another timebase setting, so the firmware would
have to know about the BOM change. The component still could have different
ratings. It likely is the same, though.

 

[keithr]

Probably not because it is bleedingly obvious that it was IDENTICAL from the
simplicity of the hack that has been explained in detail.

It certainly isn't bleedin' obvious unless it has been done. All that
has been proved it that the hack appears to give similar results.

If you have actually looked at the eevblog and are still asking this question then you are a bit thick.

If you take things at face value without proper checking then you are a
bit stupid.

Also, Rigol have apparently reacted and changed the firmware to stop
the simple hack.

Of course they have, it still doesn't prove that the firmwares are
identical.

So all roads lead to Rome, so to speak.

I can see both ends of the road that I live in, but Rome doesn't appear
to be at either of them.

 

[keithr]

"keithr"

** Of course there is you fucking retarded puke.

Buyers are deliberately kept in the dark about the real situation in order
to get them to pay an unjustifiably higher price for the 100MHz model. That
is a deception tantamount to fraud.

You got what you paid for, no deception. Stop whining.