There’s been a lot of interest in hacking the 50MHz Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope to work at 100MHz. The hack takes two parts. First remove a low pass filter, and then (see comments, thanks for the correction) Just modify the firmware to get it working at higher speeds.
Forum member IPenguin just confirmed that this hack also works with Rigol firmware v2.04. IPenguin posted an extensive illustrated guide to the hack in PDF format if you want to try it yourself.
You have bad link in the v2.04 with double http, opera doesn’t like it at all.
Thanks, updated.
Very cleaver hack that :)
I don’t think you actually need to remove the low-pass filter from the scope – from what I recall, the bandwidth of the filter is controlled by a varactor which the firmware uses to set the bandwidth appropriately. With the scope softmodded to be 100 MHz, the filter is set correctly.
IMPORTANT: You do not need to remove or touch the low pass filter. The firmware switches between two filter settings. This hardware mod is only if you do not do the firmware mod.
To confirm Randy’s and Luke S’ posts: The hardware hack won’t give you anything but permanently remove the low pass filter … while the firmware hack disables the low pass filter and adds the 2ns/div time base option (and faster sweep speed) to the horizontal system . There is no need to open the scope and mod the hardware. However, for firmware ver. 2.04.0x it is required to downgrade the firmware to ver. 2.02.02 (2.02 SP2) first before applying the hack.