In order to do some advanced hax0ring of the SPMP8k, we bought a logic analyzer. It’s called the LogicCube by a Taiwanese company, ZeroPlus. We’ve already gone and hacked it front to back, top to bottom, side to side and more. But we’ll get to all that in due time.
Fig 1 – Photo of the Zeroplus Logic Cube
The device scores high marks on our chart for:
- Dependability - You plug it in, and it does what it says it’s going to. No screwing around with dodgy drivers and flaky hardware. These guys really do seem to use their own hardware, and it shows. FEBE? For engineers, by engineers?
- Reliability - It always does what it says it’s going to do. It doesn’t miss edges or do other stupid stuff. Ever, as far as we can tell and that’s a big plus for us.
- Portability - It’s nice that the whole setup: Cube, USB cable, fancy colored wires, and some minigrabbers all fit nicely in a ziplock bag. Keeps it fresh, as well.
- Capability - Depending on how much money you’re willing to spend, you can get a device with 16 or 32 channels, and memory ranging from 32k to 2MB. That’s a lotta sampling! But since these guys aren’t stupid, they added some pretty awesome triggering and compression that gives you tons of sampling with very little memory. Also, the plug-in protocol analyzers are fantastic. We hate counting I2C clocks and writing hex characters by hand, so having the software do all the work is great.
- Hackability - Due to economies of scale naturally found in manufacturing, the board we got (smallest mem, lowest channels) was able to be upgraded to a pretty awesome box for just about $10. Oh, that and a shitload of work. But that stuff’s considered fun over here.
Teardown & Functional Description
Teardown is dead freakin easy. Remove the 4 rubber feet on the bottom/back to reveal 4 totally goofy sheet-metal looking screws. The only part of the device that was oddly low-quality was these screws. Not a big deal, but when you open and close the box about a thousand times, you think how ugly they are about a thousand times. Guess it stuck.
Fig 2 – Back of the LAP-C Showing the 4 Case Screws.
LAP-C is what they call it, so that’s what we’ll be calling it too. Guess it’s the lower-end of what ZeroPlus manufactures, but it’s fine for us. Blows SUMP clean out of the water, and trust us – we love SUMP! But you get what you pay for, really.
One thing you’ll notice is that we’re blurring out the device’s serial number. Why? Well when we went googling, we found that all the serial numbers were always blurred out. It occurred to us that the image of a serial number must be considered pornographic in Taiwan, so we decided to blur ours in order to show respect.
Sure, the protocol licensing is tied to the serial number among other things, but unless we showed our serial number AND our license key, AND you changed your device’s serial number to ours – we can see no way that the public viewing of a serial number could in any way affect ZP. But still blurred – and hence, they must either be highly offensive or highly arousing and in either case are not suitable for public viewing.
Continued on Next Page… Jump to Page 2
By ame June 23, 2011 - 5:04 am
So this looks like a great hack. I happen to have a circa Sep-09 Saelig ByteMaster which is just a rebranded zeroplus in an aluminum enclosure instead of plastic. The one i have is the LAP-D 16128 so I may give this a go. I haven’t yet figured out how to open the chassis though. It appears to be a clamshell with no screws, but there must be some sort of latch to get it open. Anybody seen one or have any ideas how to open the case? (Yes, I know this article is old).
By openschemes June 23, 2011 - 3:40 pm
Wow, we had no idea! If the device is really this old, then there is a good chance it’s hackable. We’d be very interested in seeing a pic of the mainboard if you want to email it to admin at openschemes..
As far as opening the case, be sure to feel all the stickers and overlays to see if there are possibly hidden screws. Otherwise, there’s a chance that the sides just snap in and the PCB is hard mounted to one of them. You would need to compare the two sides to see if one of them looks like there is play between the connectors and the side plate. Then, try to get in at the edge with a jewler’s screwdriver or something and see if the side plate pops out. It would be surprising (and mechanically astounding) if both side plates were sealed hard unless some sort of glue were used.
Dunno how you feel about a half-damaged device, but it’s probably not necessary to have a side plate on the USB side – that side is usually pointing away from you!
By George November 24, 2011 - 3:41 am
I have a LAP-16128U bought many years ago. I was never really sutisfied by its capabilities. But lately I tried to make some Logic Analysis to a PCB on which the GND was connected to Power Earth. This is common to many PCBs for safety reasons. From that time-on the LAP-16128U is not working well. I checked the USB GND (from PC side) and I discovered that is not connected to GND point that goes to the PCB. So forcing the two GNDs toghether made a problem. It is pitty because in the manual does not mention that the PCB GND shoud be isolated from EARTH GND.
Do you have any idea what part may be distroyed?
By openschemes November 29, 2011 - 8:49 pm
If there was an AC difference between USB GND and PCB GND, then it could conceivably damage the device. But if the two grounds were connected together, then it should be OK and not damage the LAP. What symptom are you seeing? Some channels not working, or no response from LAP at all? If the input buffers (the likely spot to fail) were damaged then they are an easy replacement.
By George December 1, 2011 - 9:44 am
The symptom is that I collect a lot of garbage instead of clear signals as I did before. If I can send the files just tell me an e-mail.
By sargon April 29, 2012 - 8:31 pm
is this still hackable with the current model i have oct 2011 , believe issues with new asic being grounded internal , also 4 pins on my unit 16032 have been cut flush on asic , may be solder able again but its not easy to do by looks and if its required ?
any input from someone who has a recent batch would be good
By openschemes May 1, 2012 - 2:39 pm
You can use a multimeter to check the resistance from the pin stub to GND to see if it’s grounded internally.
By sargon May 3, 2012 - 3:39 am
cant do that till the cuts are made on the underside of pcb , as i understand it