Fluke EtherScope Network Analyzer Teardown and Repair
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- I found a Fluke network analyzer from 2005 that needed a bit of repair...but tearing it down revealed that it's far more than just a simple Ethernet cable tester.
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@This Does Not Compute The AC97 DAC was planned for use in testing VoIP network integration during network testing and Skype calls. There was a Beta run of the software to activate the feature with select companies. The feature was dropped last I checked due to stability issues and cost overruns.
Heh i just thought the same .... nice to see that i got it right. ;)
Wish they told symbol(tm) that information… that was what made the rollout of a advanced inventory control hardware that also had voip problematic and was unreliable as a phone. It was a terrible dac. Would do very strange undocumented things in certain situations. That saying “the cheap becomes expensive” rang true. Gamers could of said how bad that ac97 standard is.
These are super useful. I had a similar Fluke at a job long ago. We had new cubicles set up and the contractor labeled the ports in the cubicles incorrectly (of course). Since the Fluke can communicate with Cisco switches directly, I was able to see which switch and port it was connected to. Then I could properly label the jacks and assign the proper VLANs to the ports.
hard to believe a $8000+ device cut corner on a charging jack
Bad fluke, bad fluke
Sadly, this isn't a fluke for Fluke.
Building a great piece of equipment with one major flaw from cost-cutting is fairly consistent for them. Many of them, like this one, can be fixed if you know wheat you're doing. I'm pretty sure there were a few of their voltmeters where the only thing they really changed was the shell, meaning you could get the expensive version of the tool by barely modifying the plastic shell on the cheap version.
How many that I seen break I stopped counting? Even seen them break on the Scopemeter and etc.
Audio probably for telecoms/VOIP testing
Wedge of epoxy all round the jack, having previously roughened up the surface
The audio function is expected to be equipped with VoIP related diagnosis.
It’s so you can RickRoll a Fluke!
Yep.
Legit just popped on to suggest this! Packet capture VoIP traffic and then listen back to the recorded audio of that VoIP call, to help determine where issues with call quality might be coming from - among other.
I was wondering if perhaps it would allow a modem addon, but they probably just sold a different device for that.
Colin @This Does Not Compute
... at 17:30 the BootLoader apparently is from Feb 2006.... that is most likely the original version / date.......... Now nice Prosesor... 64Mb of ram... AC97 DAC .. Gigabit Ethernet.. etc etc......... but .. Will it run DOOM !! .. LOL :-DD
Many years ago when I was working overseas for DoD, they bought Fluke OneTouch tools for every shop so we could do better network troubleshooting. When I opened the shipping box I found that Fluke had enclosed a coupon for a free Fluke Linkrunner. I filled it out and sent it off and a few weeks later had a shiny Linkrunner sitting in my APO mail box.
Of course using a OneTouch to troubleshoot PairGain T1 and E1 modems over ancient copper cables laid down in WWII by Nazis is kind of overkill so I mostly used the LinkRunner and kept it with me in my network go-bag.
I still have that Linkrunner to this very day almost 20 years later and it still works just fine, it just doesn't do PoE or anything higher than 100mbps but it's great for testing patch cables, blinking ports, and testing connectivity all the way out to the internet. I've looked into buying a newer Linkrunner but I do NOT like the direction the company that Fluke sold them to has taken the newer Linkrunners.
Wish I could find something in that same size and form factor but could do PoE and gigabit ethernet.
Intel was a big player in the ARM segment in the early 2000's. They had the StrongARM series of chips (SA1100, etc), which then became the PXA series in subsequent generations. They bowed out of the ARM segment in the mid-late 2000's IIRC. The Sharp Zaurus 5xxx series PDAs used Intel ARM chips and ran Linux. That 2MB memory near the EPSON controller is probably video RAM.
By PXA you mean XScale, correct?
@@MaximNightFury SA1100 was a DEC chip, Intel bought StrongARM and SA1100 begat the PXA series of the newly renamed XScale processors. StrongARM -> XScale.
I seem to recall that Intel bought from DEC their StrongARM business and started manufacturing their own ARM CPUs back in the day. Originally the SA1100 and SA1110 were CPUs of between 190MHz and 206MHz which were used in HPs Jornada 820 and 720 series. They then started making the PXA series chips which generally were about 400MHz but ended up at 624MHz. I’m sure they were used in other applications but were mainly found in PDAs. A few years later Intel sold their ARM CPU business and I believe Marvell bought the rights to it or bought their business outright.
As to the OS, it is indeed Linux and the distribution was called Qtopia which is now called Qt Extended.
I think it was the x-scale processors, in a bunch of PDAs including iPaqs and Dell's.. axiom or something? It's been a while lol...
@@anthrobug Indeed. The X-Scale CPU's were the PXA series of CPUs.
We have one of the more modern Fluke cable tester/certifiers at work, and I think the price was like $12k a few years ago
Sounds like the Versiv to me, great bit of kit.
@@DarenPage Yeah, that's what it is! We don't use it nearly to its potential, but it is definitely nice to have vs a standard cable tester
Or test HDbaseT audio streaming like stadiums used to use
@@numlockkilla Fluke Versiv for HDBT? What about Murideo/mSolution HDBT tester?
Fluke equipment has always been expensive as f***. For good reason though, they were benchmark for network related tools and diagnosis.
Professional test equipment for EVERYTHING is expensive
The assumption is, the quality the testing will allow will pay for the equipment.
Good video as always, Colin. Regarding the audio capabilities, consider that VOIP technology was coming into prominence around the same time that FLUKE made this device. I was doing network stuff around the mid-2000s, and a bunch of clients were interested in replacing their POTS system with VOIP.
A LOT of clients.
There's a firmware update for this model on fluke's website, I'd like to see an update for this video showing that process.
Edit: I used to have Anritsu and Wiltron spectrum and RF cable analyzer and they were a pain in the butt to update, they must have been connected via lan to a pc with master software that download the firmware from the web checking the serial number. A nightmare but quite rewarding, actually. As someone pointed out that "check sw update" button could still do something.
Great content, Colin, as usual.
I wonder if that "check for updates" button in the version info works
Do you have a link to the update? I recently acquired one of these testers and would like to update it. I can't seem to find anything on Fluke Networks site about this device.
@@danielhansen7703 I found the firmware here: drive.google.com/file/d/1XPKl1-0oA8-v4JPLcRU70iY1owgtRH9d/view do you happen to have instructions for clearing the password on the device? I read something like possibly using the serial port to console it and login as admin and pass of 'factory defaults' but that was for an optiview.
@@SinisterSpatula How'd you find this?
@@pattygq Google skills and lots of searching :)
I used to work with Fluke/Philips and I remember when the sales manager in the Sydney office broke the screen of the then really new ScopeMeter when it was first released about 1990 ....it did not go down well, as that was our only demo model.... [I was in the Melbourne office]...
Millions of devices would still work if engineers wouldn't abuse a solder joint as a mechanical connection.
Or if engineers would actually engineer and fix it
@Tano I don't think it's fair to compare a consumer grade product to a testing equipment.
That's fine the copper should have been bigger, maybe add some vias to the other side to create a better anchor. But IMHO doing it that way properly is absolutely fine, you just have to do it right.
I use a Fluke Versiv on a daily basis, this stuff is pure nerd porn. Oh and the reason there are different lengths on each pair is due to the fact that each pair has a slightly different amount of twists, this is to reduce the amount of crosstalk between each pair by ensuring that twists occur less frequently between pairs. As each pair has a different amount of twists, will ultimately affect it's overall length, you'll find that the lengths ARE actually quite accurate.
Blues got that tight twist goin on.
Super glue won't hold. If you're not tired of looking at it, maybe try 2-part epoxy resin (like a 5-minute resin). It's harder to repair in the future... but less chance of needing to repair it :)
Or hot glue gun glue. This device probably doesn't get hot.
@@parkman29 The hot glue i use does stick. You have to clean any residue off the PCB first.
@@parkman29 Hotsnot ABSOLUTELY sticks to PCBs
I've probably seen caps and shit lashed down with hot glue a million times
Hey Colin it's everyone, how's it goin'?
hey everyone, its Colin, How its goin'?
Hahaha! When intro’s gets hijacked.
Hey Guys, it’s Everyone, how’s Colin Austin?
Hey all, Colin here!
Funny enough, some of the old nForce motherboards used to use this Marvell 88E1111 chipset. They were actually quite handy for cable testing.
I remember using a similar device like this in 2003 in high school. I was a T.A. for the computer lab and troubleshooting connections was about half of my work. The other half was walking off campus to go to 7-11 lol
Looks like Qtopia. The same thing ran on the Sharp Zaurus linux based PDAs, which had XScale StrongARM processors. Coincidentally, the clamshell Zaurus PDAs were *very* popular at the time with network admins because you could plug Ethernet, WiFi and serial adapters into them and configure routers and switches and do network testing with a device that easily fit in your tool bag. It was kind of amazing how many people had them considering that you had to order them from Japan and install a community-made English translated OS on them.
The compact flash card is for storing screenshots and pcap packet capture files. I use one of these to locate devices with improper subnet masks or things broadcasting for DHCP on a static VLAN. If you use the I think XDP tool, it will snif CDP/LLDP packets to get a switch name and exact port number so you can find the other end of your cable. This can also operate as a tone generator for a wire tracer and can measure cables, as well as identify mismatched wiring. It has a built in VNC server so you can remotely control it. Despite its age, it is still extremely useful.
The 2MB ram chip looks like it's a framebuffer for the video chip
I have two of these at work still in the cases. Someone has lost all the termination tester ends, but it comes with a really sweet mini keyboard!
Working in a datacenter in 2007 this would've been like a friggin TRICORDER
(18:01) It appears to be running Qt Extended on top of some form of embedded Linux distro.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Extended
You can actually see the Qt in the “start button”!
@@kaitlyn__L yes
Yeah it's based on the same OS setup as the Sharp Zaurus (which also used an Intel XScale ARM cpu)
Hey Colin! Greetings from Madrid, Spain. Regarding the processor, I remember having Compaq/HP iPAQ devices which had Intel StrongARM (and later, XScale) CPUs in early/mid 2000s. I believe Intel later sold their ARM processor division to Marvell, that would be the reason you have a Marvell CPU with the same part number as an Intel CPU.
The TDR functionality is clutch. I'm a cable tech and I can't tell you how many times having a TDR or OTDR has helped me resolve issues.
During its time it certainly was a big deal. I don’t think dedicated devices with it are quite as popular now because a lot of network switches have built-in TDR testing capability.
@@ThisDoesNotCompute very true, a lot of my current kit has made dedicated tools obsolete, but whenever I needed one they were lifesavers! Regardless, very cool video as usual! Thanks!!
I’m a telecoms network engineer in the UK and we are issued either Viavi onx-580 devices or Exfo Max testers.
These are all in one unit and have a large amount of functions for testing the external network (copper and fibre) as well as complete broadband sync and faulting. They’re extremely expensive but luckily we are issued with them
I have two of these at work and they have bad batteries.DC jacks ok on both and the damn wiremapper loopbacks are missing. Great video.
I had a coworker who had the same exact tool. It was overkill for what he was using it for, but it is a really good cable tester if you have one...
Maybe the future use was to turn them into clunky MP3 players.
Interesting video, thanks. Not sure if it had any L7 features but maybe as the date of release was around the early adoption of VoIP protocols like H.323 and SIP, there was scope for it to be a voice analyser hence the audio jacks and AC97 support?
I really enjoyed this video!
Also wow, those things are still expensive on eBay! Makes sense, they are still really useful! Test equipment holds value really well (like oscilloscopes and stuff!).
Yes they are still pretty expensive, but you can get a decent one between $500-$2000
Great video Colin, I really enjoyed this one!
In my experience; the reported TDR length is sometimes longer for some of the pairs in the same cable because some of the pairs have a slightly tighter twist than others... I believe this is to counteract cross-talk?
I could never afford one of these (or a modern day equivalent) but I found a very cool tester crammed full of features called PocketEthernet... A real quality tool!
You can get one off of eBay these days for an affordable price
Very interesting gadget. While I do like Fluke, that power jack, as you showed us, was not their finest hour!
Hi Colin, I'm also a network engineer😊. You make great videos, I love this channel👍🏻
An impressive repair, Colin!
ca glue works very to glue missing pads back to the fiber board, them you extend the solder from the pads to the traces. A epoxy job all over the section is welcome too
10:35 Well, maybe the ac97 audio stuff was put in place for a later VoIP foobar upgrade/update?
Would make sense to me, having a full blown ethernet cable tester to check out some VoIP wiring including checking the data part to the SIP trunk/server ;)
Who knows ;)
Intel sold their ARM SOC business (StrongARM and later XScale) to Marvell in 2006. That's why the same SOC is branded both Intel and Marvell.
We’ve got a Fluke NetScout at work, and I always get in trouble with it when I hook it up to the network cuz it sets off so many alarms when it starts scanning.
The Fluke we’ve got had WiFi built in, and it’s got a couple SFPs, and 3 Ethernet ports. We’ve got ours upgraded to Windows 10, but it’s shit slow.
Fluke makes extremely nice gear, but it’s fucking expensive. The upgraded the later models with a larger screen and it has multiple battery packs that can be removed without removing the rubber.
The hardware is nice, but it’s all in their software, because it can do so much. It’s sick because you can plug it into a drop and it’ll tell you the name of the switch and what port it’s plugged into.
Please show more of these industrial devices that we as normal humans likely never see.
quick weld by jb weld its a minute setting epoxy i would have coated the plug casing with it and put the unit back together and let it sit for 24 hours will never come off the board again.
This kind of Xilinx FPGA is also used by a device we once produced. It was a professional business DSL-Device.
The microphone and headphone jack were for Flukes "network whisperer" technology, where the IT tech basically tries to convince the network to behave by whispering supportive compliments to the network. Hopefully, making it act better.
It looks like there is an electrical connection to the corner-most pad of the power jack-- a thin trace around the perimeter of the board that also connects to those solder-fortified vias.
23:06
I spy a Terminal option. Open it in ya spare time and run stuff like:
uname -a
cat /proc/cpu
cat /proc/mtd
cat /proc/meminfo
ls -a /bin/busybox*
ls -a /bin/apt*
ls -a /bin/yum*
And maybe some other commands.
Who knows, may run a fork of Debian.
And:
cat /etc/issue
That's not what it does, Terminal opens a terminal emulator through the serial port (2:22), useful for configuring network equipment of that era.
That's actually the same soc* that my dell PDA uses
As with all the last-gen Palms
Fluke doesn't make anything remotely close to this device. They now have separate devices to test Ethernet and Fiber and WiFi. If you want a copper Rj45/RJ11 toner, they have one too. It'd be nice to get an upgraded all-in-one device like this one. Today, to get all the functionality of this device, you are looking at spending between $20-30k if you go with Fluke brand. The reason refurb units cost $12k + is that there could still be a need for one of these to the right people.
I enjoyed this so much, thank you! Brings back some memories man...
Back in the day, I used to work on telecoms equipment software/firmware, my guess is (as some others have pointed out) the sound stuff is probably for testing VoIP, pretty sure HP/Aligent had similar gear, I remember using something similar but with extra interfaces (V.35, X.21 etc)
Thanks for the video
Clearly Fluke designed the charging port to see which customers were worthy or not. If you own a Fluke equipment, you are expected to be able to do simple soldering!
Hey, we used those at work. Now we replaced them woth ThinkPad X590 running a custom Linux distro (we internally call it LanLinux)
You wondered in the video what Lnux distro this thing was using as implied by the manual. I would think that this thing is likely not using any actual Linux distro (n the sense we usually think of a distro as) as the basis for it’s OS but rather simply either a) Using the the Linux kernel and some other Linux open-source components along with a custom GUI/UI coded specifically for this device or b) they hired a third-party to provide a embedded-style Linux OS that ushers a UI that is customizable to each clients needs. These types of devices, when using Linux as their OS typically take the kernel and whatever other OS components needed such as networking, videos, audio, and storage drivers/components and then have a custom GUI/UI written specifically for a device or family of devices or In some cases, a third-party may make a version of Linux that includes very customizable UI that can be modified to suit whatever product your putting the UI on, thus it takes the form of an Windows Embedded style OS distro in that case but it’s not a Linux distro in the usual sense we think of them. It’s highly unlikely they simply took Ubuntu or Cent OS or Arch Linux and swapped their own GUI/desktop interface onto it as most desktop distros include too many components and additional software then would be needed for any network anylizer device. There are some highly customizable Linux distorts like Gentoo Linux which require to compile everything from course as you build the system locally on your machine but Gentoo isn’t really the sort of distro you would expect to be used in this sort of application.
My first Synology DS-101j NAS I got in Feb' 2006 had an Xscale CPU and running a Linux operating system. Excellent NAS that I still have now, although I use a newer model these days.
still a cool device. great job on the repair. thanks for the video.
Did it work, or was it just a FLUKE. ;)
(Didn't watch the whole video yet)
About the headphones jack it may be a good option to hear the beeps of the tests because sometimes you have to put your head and hands into pretty little places to connect the RJ45 jacks and if you're also in an industrial noisy environment then the beeps in the earphones are a welcomed help (because also in tiny spaces you dont get to see the LCD,you just put the analyzer into auto loop mode and wait for the beeps while connecting ends of RJ45s from a patcher rack or something inconveniently placed where the whole analyzer cant be seen)
Headphone jack is so you can hear test results in a noisy place like a server room or factory. More useful when using the WiFi card and you’re looking for an unwelcome WiFi device by signal strength.
Didn't know you were a network engineer! Hello from another engineer :D
I would really like to see some of the software info on that thing. The distro and apps. Did it come with any type of software you can share?
The headphones jack allows you to here static and other noise on the lines, mic jack is for voice dictation for creating a report or add a tone for jack detection and both could be used for voip network to Check to see if the voip phones are working, if you know how to hack it to play music, I used one at my school when we where setting up the new network and voip phones.
yeah, but does it run doom?
The PXA255 processor is in Sharp Zaurus PDAs. The SL-C750 thru SL-C780 models @ 400 MHz. The small QT icon in the bottom-left corner is the Qtopia desktop symbol.
These devices also ran Linux OpenPDA OS. Also, the icons on the taskbar are the same as the ones I have on my later model Zaurus SL-C3100 and SL-C3200, which have a PXA270 processor @ 416 MHz. And run Lineo uLinux kernel 2.4.20 (Just a comparison, these later models came out in 2004-2005)
We had a simpler version of this tool at school. The teacher warned us that it was super specialized equipment and that it was really expensive to buy.
Didn't know you were a network engineer, I studied to be a network engineer back in 2015 and got work with an MSP in 2016. Kinda wish I hadn't resigned but what canyado
Great Channel, I really was curious to see plug-in an usb keyboard, use the terminal app, and do a telnet or who-is, etc... See you at the next video. Cheers!!!
I used to have a Gigabyte motherboard with a realtek GBE chip probably garden variety RTL8169 or 8111 and you could go into the BIOS and do a TDR test so unless that was some weird software hackjob I don't think that functionality is that uncommon. Are you using the original charger with it? The actual plug moulding is part of the mechanical design of the jack. It has to be seated and fairly snug inside the rim of the case or all the mechanical stress is on the jack/solder joints. If the original charger's plug didn't seat properly inside, then that is a massive fail.
EEVBlog found an oscilliscope with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of options... in the dumpster. I think the power switch was broken.
I wonder if the Audio jacks and Audio hardware was for VOIP. If you had 2 guys working on the network, each with Network Analyzers, you could use the audio to communicate with each other
You could mix bacon soda with super glue to put around the connect to make it super durable.
I used one similar to that around 2010 ish a lot to certify networks i big buildings, the microphone and headphones is to talk to the guy in the other end,at least in the model we had lol.
Hello ! I have the same equipment and I have a broken screen, do you know where I could get one? thank you
Great content as always! In the terminal app/screen does "uname -a" work? That'd give you more info on what kernel/OS etc it's running. I know it's Linux but yeah... more detail.
So they are using this to see if the problem is serious and fixable, or if the error is just a Fluke?
11:46 - took me a second to notice, nice xD
Perhaps the audio feature was in cases when using two for communication between technicians for certain tests. For the jack, five minute epoxy might have been better. Crazy glue is too brittle for this type of stress.
Wouldn't some of the pairs have slightly different lengths due to the differences in how much they are twisted?
It's not based on resistance. It's based on Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR). Look at Fluke's documents. That's how it can measure distance to open circuit. I mentioned the twists because a highly twisted cable is naturally going to be longer than one that is less so.
My father taught me on scraped solderpad to use some aluminum tape then solder it there incase of no visible path can be soldered in.
that PXA SOC was also used (in its Intel form) in many HP/Compaq iPaq PDAs (my old h3900 has one
That’s pretty wild… why on earth they chose a surface-mount DC jack instead of one with through-hole mounting is insane!
Couldnt this be replaced with a laptop running some network analysis software???
Damn I was just hunting for a cousin of this line of fluke tools to tear down for my ESP8266 cable tester and here we are.
That's QTopia! Same as the sharp zaurus SL-C3000. It is a wonderful OS
you could add tone-dial-tests with the audio jacks xD
My Acer netbook I had to work on the power jack and in my netbook Acer put the DC power jack on a Daughter board and it was the plastic holder that broke. Fluke should have done what Acer did in some of there netbooks.
What do you do for work? I help maintain networking for my employer's Linux distro, so most of my time is reading the network stack and drivers or in Wireshark.
i dunno... i still have this feeling the other jack pad connected the copper fill to the ground for a purpose.. ;) nice vid thx
DankPods army, Someone's been in here, get the vegemite and crack open a can of Fosters
It runs Linux with QTopia, just like the Sharp Zaurus 5xxx PDA.
you could have scraped the plane next to the right pad and add a little solder bridge for extra rigidity
Hey not a network guy here, Just wondered if someone could tell me if this works like an oscilloscope for ethernet data or has the feature to do so ? Can you actually see the data bursts of packet data on the Rx an Tx of what's being sent down the cable ? Much appreciated.
Interesting video. Keep them coming please!
The headphone and mic Jacks were for monitoring ds3/ds1.
I'd sign up for more network/test equipment content tbh
Colin: “This device is from around 2005...”. Me: “dude, that chip has a 2008 date code, that chip has a 2008 date code, etc...”
The model was introduced in 2005.
Yeah kinda same, I was like no way this is from 2005, given the 08 date codes. Then the manufacturing date is 09 so that pretty much explained it.
Can you do a battery replacement video on that apple emate because a lot of emate batteries are dying because of they're age and there isn't much info on the subject
Man I figured this would have been only a couple of G's at best when new, not over $8K 😲
Fluke's testing equipment is on the higher end of the spectrum in terms of cost. Also probably why a lot of those ethernet testers are probably still in use today. I coworker was using one of those roughly 5 years back for cable testing and the like...
@@alexdhall Zero surprise it was still in use, and that's true with Fluke being on the higher end. the Fluke 117 electricians kit I got from my late father along with some of his other tools(a lot I would never want to buy with prices these days) who was a welder/mechanic/all around handy man in his time was around $400 when he bought it back in the day.
@@alexdhall yes they do tend to last for a very long time. I have a couple fluke devices that I still use today for quick cable testing, link activity, etc
is it my idea or the PCB has a shitload of test points? All these round patches of solder mask that sometimes overlap with the silkscreen
Some pairs are inherently wrapped tighter than others... look at the 4 pairs next time you have a cable stripped, it's purposely done.... and the meter is likely actually estimating fairly accurately, as more twists will equal slightly longer pairs.