[Chris] has been spending a lot of time in the wife’s sewing room lately, and things got pretty serious late last night as to unlock the 1104Z capabilities lurking within. The rumors are true, and ungoverning the software is as simple as looking up your serial number and knowing the right URL for generating a valid license. [Chris] ran into a dud site, but that’s the price of doing business in the shadowy parking garage basements of the interwebs. Once he knocked on the right door and uttered the secret word, however, he became the proud owner of 50MHz additional bandwidth, decoders for SPI, I²C, and RS-232, twice the storage depth, and all teh triggers that ship with the 1104Z. Stick around for [Chris]’s video walk-through. Can’t rationalize the purchase even at the ridiculously low price point?. Services Program Cmsp.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn some French. Posted in, Tagged,,,,, Post navigation.

Looks like you have trouble finding the exact value of your age. Use the DS1054Z, it is a nice oscilloscope at a great price. Then do the hack at (that is the hack that works, there is another one but it did not work for me) and use ONLY the DSFR code in the options, after you input your serial number. Forget about the privatekey field, you don’t need it AFAIK.

Once done, you will have a 100mhz oscilloscope. THEN use one probe on your left index finger (Channel 1) and another probe on your right big toe (Channel 2). Wait 5 seconds and you will be able to read your correct age in Gigaherz. Do not invert finger / toe sides or you will be fried. Seriously, a great 100mhz (after modding it) oscilloscope for little money! He links in to the review Dave Jones did, and one of the things that Dave noted in that and a companion review where he maps the circuit is that the input bandwidth is limited by capacitors in the circuit that are controlled from the microcontroller.

There was some discussion in a previous thread about cloning Tektronix application modules (the one that sparked the DMCA takedown notice from Tektronix) about the ethics of software hacking like this, with some people saying that they think a hack like this is stealing. Now, Chris used a software hack to get the functionality, but by cutting and remapping the traces coming from the chip (that is, a hardware hack) you could achieve the same outcome, at least in terms of getting the higher bandwidth. As Chris says in the video, it seems that Rigol have made it at least somewhat hacker friendly to do these kinds of things. I’m kind of in the same boat as him – I’ve always thought that feature unlocking a cheaper scope is akin to overclocking a cheaper GPU or (perhaps more accurately) messing with the tune on a engine control unit in a car to get those extra horsepower they want to charge you more for. For those wondering, no, Rigol do not deliberately allow their scopes and other gear to be hacked in order to get more sales.