The HP 8753C comes with some software options 010, time domain (essentially, a built-in FFT function), and the even more useful harmonic analysis, option 002. These work without any further calibration, and used to be available as a code to enter to the instrument , with service function 56, to update the option status.

Thanks to a kind gentleman, such codes are available now, and normally you can add them to the 8753C without any expert knowledge and risk.

Unfortunately, for this instrument, the method to add options by code entry didn’t work. How come? As much as we know, the option code depends on the serial number, let’s check if the serial of the CPU board is the same as that of the instrument (ending in 00860). A first hurdle, how to read the serial – it is not showing upon startup for the 8753C, but you can get it by first executing service function 55, which will fail, and then go to Display-Title.

To my big surprise, the serial shown is incorrect, only 4 digits, missing the “8”.

Accordingly, we need to dig deeper, and the serial number and other information is stored on the U23 EEPROM, a 2kByte chip, Xicor.

It is a very long lasting device, no reason to believe that it will fail anytime soon, but there are always risks. First, I read all the coefficients via GPIB, and then carefully desoldered the chip.

Actually, desoldering went very well, even just with plain tools, a soldering iron and a manual solder sucker.

The programmer, put together from a few jumper cables, and an ATMEGA128A board. When reading, I hardwired the WE- write enable input to VCC, to make sure that no data are lost. There are also 6k8 pull ups directly on the ZIF socket, to make sure the input stays “High” even if the jumper wire is not connected well.

In the EEPROM, clearly there is the incorrect serial, it is not actually missing a digit, but has an incorrect character. Maybe it got modified when the CPU clock failed (remember that this board had a bad osciallator?

Now, we need to put in a single character, an “8”.

I don’t normally need to program 2816 EEPROMs, so rather than taking chances with some incompatible programmers, I made a small program, to just set a single byte, at a given address. In this case, writing an “8”.

With the serial number corrected, put the EEPROM back onto the CPU board – using a precision socket.

Using the secret code that only works with the matching serial – and with the write protection of the CPU board disabled – the option install worked perfectly fine.

Now, the 8753C shows the options upon startup, and the time domain and harmonic analysis functions show up in the menu as softkeys.

Afterwards, I checked the EEPROM contents again, there are only 3 bytes changed, in-line with what can be found in online forums. Also tried to activate the 006 6 Ghz option, not much use for me, but the option code is same as seen for the 8753D, etc. There are 3 bytes, right in front of the serial, with the upper half-byte bits all set (0xFx), and the lower half-byte encoding the options in a bit-wise fashion. With no options, the three option bytes are all zeros 0x00.

If you need any of these EEPROMs or related advise with the 8753x units, just drop me a line.