Hello,

I am about to become owner of second hand MG3700A purchased from ebay.
The instrument is nice but having mechanical HDD inside is not the best.
Someone knowing if backup /replacement is possible now a days?
I am in a desecrate need for the IQproducer software as well.

Thank you.
Dimitar

 

The mechanical hard drive is indeed a point of worry. I'd replace it with a good(!) SSD.

I do have two MG3700As but both are later models (manufactured in '12) and both already came with a 128GB Transcend 44pin PATA SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive from Anritsu. These SSDs are still made and reasonably cheap and very reliable (I've used the same type in other test gear).

The best way to transfer the data is to use Linux 'dd' to create a 1:1 image on the SSD, and keep the hard drive as backup.

Firmware updates (there were quite a few) and the latest version of IQproducer (which is still updated) can be downloaded from the Anritsu website if you have an account there. Unfortunately Anritsu in general isn't very helpful towards hobbyists, and even if you're a company you have to go through some kind of approvals process before you get access to the files.

 

Hi Wuerstchennund,

Thank you for the response. Indeed I already registered at Anritsu and downloaded the software.

I still don't know if mine is from the old or new batch.
For the old batch I've heard that the instrument OS expects HDD being slow.
People using recent SSDs reported issues like VxWorks hangs due to some race condition if fast drive is used.
I will see after I get the instrument.
Thank you

 

It doesn't matter how old your MG3700A is, they all come with the same 44pin UDMA33 interface. People often put SATA SSDs with SATA-to-PATA adapter in there which is why they experience issues. If they used a native PATA SSD like the Transcend PSD330 then there shouldn't be any issues, provided they copied the partitions over correctly.