[time-nuts] What are people paying for Stanford PRS10 rubidium standards?

[Rex]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:12:28 -0400, David Andersen <dga+ at cs.cmu.edu>
wrote:

>Unfortunately for you, 
>that seller (glossa7) knows what s/he's doing.   I've bid against him 
>on several items, and he typically bids immediately at a reasonable 
>price level on the items.  It was very frustrating when I was buying 
>old HP counters to strip out their oscillators.  People kept wanting to 
>actually pay a reasonable price for them...
>
>You probably won't regret paying $475 - they're about 3x that new - but 
>it's on the edge of what I'd pay for a surplus Rb oscillator.  On the 
>bright side, that seller _does_ seem to know what he's doing, and I've 
>seen him on ebay for a long time, so I'd believe him when he says that 
>the oscillator is working perfectly.

I've had mixed results buying from that seller. Never a deliberate scam,
but one xtal oscillator that seems to be not quite right while other
things were fine.

The worst experience was buying a FEI 5680 Rubidium, though. Brian Kirby
and I bought around the same time and swapped emails as we were having
the same experience. Glossa advertised them as tested good,
programmable, and pointed to several documents on the web. Turns out
none of that information was actually correct for these units. After
sending one back and getting a replacement that worked (actually didn't
work) the same, I finally figured how to power it correctly by tracing
circuits and got it working.

I have never figured out how to program these things. In fact I know of
no way to adjust the frequency at all, so its live with it as it runs
now.  So I find it pretty hard to figure how he tested them, if he
couldn't tell us how to power them. He has a 'friend' who knows how to
program them, but couldn't tell us how or give us a contact for
'friend'. He claims lots of other satisfied buyers of these units, but I
can't see why unless they have access to more information than I do.

So, much of his stuff is good, but not all, and don't take everything he
says as fact.

-Rex