I’ve used this board for an LED cube, but in general I don’t recommend it as a cheap general purpose FPGA board due to the lack of inputs, the different versions, and the uncertainty about getting access to the JTAG pins on later versions.
The Colorlight I5 is a much better choice for that. It’s also a high volume and this cheap HUB75 controller board but with a plug-in configuration so they all pins can be used as input or output.
What I remember of the V20 was that there was some benchmark (Norton?) that was way faster, but I never saw a difference for any real application that I tested.
I have a soft spot for the V20. The laptop I carried in high school was V20-based (a NEC Ultralite PC1701). I remember a CGA 3D billiards game I played on both the laptop and an XT clone desktop. The V20 was definitely faster for that game.
For most of what I actually used it for (typing notes and playing with QBASIC) I didn't notice a difference.
It’s not just funny to see, it’s also fun to create, satisfying to see it work, and terrifying to deploy it for hundreds of thousands of users… when it’s a cursed way to update firmware.
Not sure if you saw it, but before doing the TDS7104, I refurbished two Agilent 54831 scopes: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/03/28/Repair-of-Two-Agile.... For the one that still had a HD, copying the image from to an SSD worked without any issues. However, I also had a 54825A where it didn't work (I sold it, no blog post about that one.) So it's clearly hit-and-miss.
I found the 32 screws of the TDS7104 less of a pain than the dismantling the Agilents which had less screws.
> I found the 32 screws of the TDS7104 less of a pain than the dismantling the Agilents which had less screws.
Yeah sliding the whole thing out of the shell and the (curses) front panel ribbon that gets in the way, and the best part is that if it pops out on the front panel end, the tab is held in place by a metal prong that you have to bend (break away) to undo the tab to secure the ribbon. The prong is not screwed down, it's riveted. Breaking that thing away was the best thing I could do without ruining the panel. I ended up also gluing that ribbon to the chassis so that it doesn't get caught again.
Edit: I also bought mine to use it, hence all the extra bits around it.
My 54825A had a power-up problem: if you unplugged the AC cord for a few hours, pressing the front-panel button wouldn't power on the scope. But if you plugged in the AC for about 5 minutes, it would work fine again.
That sounds like an easy thing to fix, but the whole power-on architecture was a baffling Rube Goldberg device from the button on a small support PCB to the front panel PCB to the PC plug-in card to the power supply. I've never seen anything like it.
I disclosed the flaw to the buyer (the price was very low) and he was excited to have something to work on. :-)
There are exceptions to the "Winscopes" from the same era in the 1 GHz+ space (RTOS like VxWorks but with Ethernet and modern goodies) that are not HP/Tek/R&S, but I'm not listing them because I'm out on an active hunt for one ;-)
Yes, it's completely separate. There is a PCI2PCI bridge between the PC motherboard and the PowerPC controller board, which has in turn an interface PCB to the acquisition board.
People have replaced the RadiSys motherboard with one from a Gateway PC. There aren't a lot of other options though: the motherboard must be an NLX type and that was a short-lived format. It's different for scopes like the Agilent 54831 (https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/03/28/Repair-of-Two-Agile...) that I revived a couple of months ago: people do crazy things with that, making it work with higher resolution LCD panels, upgrading to completely different CPU classes, running Windows 10 etc.
It's remarkable that these scopes have both a PC and a PowerPC motherboard. I think they were a reaction to Agilent scopes: they wanted a PC front-end and reused the PowerPC infrastructure with VxWorks OS that they already had from other generations, so they just slapped an extra motherboard on it.
As I wrote: the TDS7104 is now sitting on a shelf in the garage, next to an Agilent 54831 and some other boat anchors. My daily drivers are a Siglent scope and a puny TDS220, which is about to be replaced by a TDS3052 that I'm bringing back to life. Hobbyists rarely need more than 100 MHz BW.
I hope you're able to thoroughly test that DSA91304a before dropping $44k on it!
Mine is a TDS224. Cheap, but I only use it for keeping my Eurorack synth going. 100MHz is overkill for audio. Although some modules use STM32 microcontrollers, so maybe the speed will come in handy.
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