[time-nuts] FE-5680A sweep range setting

Simon Lyons solutionx at shaw.ca
Sat Feb 22 22:38:34 EST 2014 

Thank you Paul, there is some detailed info there which is sure to be 
helpful. The number of variations on this thing is mind boggling.

FYI my two identical units havePPS out, no RF out and don't require 5V 
in. I will probably wire the RF out to pin 4 of the D-Sub.

I will let you know if I have success with the sweep frequency on this 
unit. It suffered a heavy blow en route from China which dented the 
outer casing and the physics package. It also broke the solder joint 
between one of the heater FETs and the lamp housing. I repaired that 
with conductive epoxy and judging by the current consumption(and purple 
glow)thetemp regulation seems to be workingnow. I just need to adjust 
the sweep freq and I will have two working units to play with!

Cheers,

// Simon


>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:37:45 -0400
> From: Paul Berger <phb.hfx at gmail.com>
> To: time-nuts at febo.com
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] FE-5680A sweep range setting
> Message-ID: <5303B689.7070805 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Hi,
>
> I have a couple that look like the one in these pictures minus the the
> little frequency control board.
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/14336723@N08/sets/72157632394339366/
> One of mine would not lock so what I did I looked at my other 5680A
> which is the type referred to in the tip about C217 and looked at how it
> is connected in relation to the crystal  for the VCXO, which is very
> close to C217.  In the ones that I have with the stacked cards this
> crystal is on the middle card with a little block of foam over it.  Near
> this crystal is a trim cap C245 that seems to be connected the same way
> relative to the crystal and by adjusting it I was able to get mine to
> lock, but did find the adjustment to be a bit twitchy and since it is on
> the middle card, you need to remove the top one every time you want to
> tweak it a bit.
>
> The one that I have are marked with option 57 and instead of having a
> flange around the edge like many of the telecom surplus ones it is
> mounted on a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate.    The top card has a PIC on
> it and there is a RS232 level converter chip there but it looks like the
> connection only go to the 5 pin connector next to the SP232ACT RS232
> chip.  This one does not require external +5V and in fact bring out the
> 10MHz on pin 4 where others seem to connect +5V. there does not appear
> to be any PPS output either.  These also have a cutout to expose the 15
> pin connector that is on the base board in front of the physics package.
>
> Paul.
>
> On 2/17/14 11:03 PM, Simon Lyons wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I have a 5680 which is failing to lock. My DDS frequency is 8388608Hz,
>> but it's sweeping between about 8388638 and 8388740. My unit has 3
>> levels of PCBs in the DDS/VCO corner and there is no trimcap labeled
>> C217. Does anyone know how to adjust the sweep center frequency on
>> this type of 'triple decker' unit?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> =Simon=
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to
>> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:34:00 -0800
> From: "Chris Smith" <csmith-list at csmith.com>
> To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP 10811-60165 Double Oven Crystal Oscillator
> 	Pin-Outs
> Message-ID: <NDBBIFHDGJNDMOKNLAHCIEFFFLAD.csmith-list at csmith.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> That pin-out sounds promising as this unit has
> BLK-RED-BLK-ORG-YEL-GRN-BLU, which seems consistent with the one that
> you provided. Did you source that from one of HP's various guides or
> somewhere else?
>
> CS
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]On
> Behalf Of Richard H McCorkle
> Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2014 11:07 AM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP 10811-60165 Double Oven Crystal Oscillator
> Pin-Outs
>
>
> Chris,
>
> The 10811-60165 may be similar to the HP 10811-60158
> that uses using the following pin-out:
>
> 1 - BRN Oscillator Return (Com)
> 2 - RED Oscillator Power (+12V)
> 3 - ORG Oven Monitor Return (Com)
> 4 - YEL Oven Monitor Output
> 5 - GRN Oven Power (+18-24V)
> 6 - BLU Oven Return (Com)
>
> The following description is from the 10811 A/B Manual
> where the recommended oven monitor circuit is shown:
>
> The Oven Monitor Output is an indicator of oven warm-up.
> At initial turn-on (warmup) the oven monitor will go to
> approximately 1.5 volts below the oven power supply
> voltage. After the oven cuts back, the output will drop
> to approximately 3.5 volts (at 25?C). The output
> impedance of this circuit is 10,000 ohms.
>
> Richard
>
>> I've seen a pin-out for the outer-oven 6-position connector (2 heater
> wires,
>> 2 thermistor wires), but I've not found anything on the pin-out of the
> other
>> 6-position connector. Has anyone come across the pin-outs for the
>> 10811-60165 connectors?
>>
>> CS
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 18:00:17 -0500
> From: Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us>
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> 	<time-nuts at febo.com>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] strange behavior of 53230A or is the light
> 	on,	but nobody in?
> Message-ID: <05EB6B68-6A54-4647-AEF1-AB52CA151E51 at rtty.us>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Hi
>
> Well at least this got me digging a little.
>
> If you grab a copy of the 53230A spec sheet and look under the external reference input, it?s pretty well described. It will accept 1, 5,10 MHz as an external reference. It will lock over a 1 ppm range with the XO option and 0.1 ppm with the OCXO option. Based on that I?d guess they are still using the same basic PLL approach as on the older counters (5335 era).
>
> The ?Microsoft Windows inside? sticker on the back of the counter was a bit of a surprise ?.
>
> Bob
>
> On Feb 18, 2014, at 11:51 AM, Tom Van Baak (lab) <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:
>
>> TomK,
>>
>> If anyone has technical contacts deep within Agilent, let's see if this issue can be resolved. I would have bought a 53230A when it came out a few years ago but my eval units showed this clock noise problem. That plus the poor quality of the ref out made me think the designers were cutting corners, or had little experience in metrology, or maybe they thought this was "ok" for a bench instrument.
>>
>> Otherwise it's a really nice counter; the first one from Agilent than can actually do ADEV properly (since it is a time stamping counter).
>>
>> I should dig out my old data and send it to you. Maybe as group we can help them fix the problem.
>>
>> /tvb
>>
>>> On Feb 18, 2014, at 12:10 AM, Tom Knox <actast at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have asked Agilent
>>> if stock versions of the 53230A and 53132A switched the internal oscillator out of circuit with an Ext Ref signal
>>> applied. I thought
>>> Agilent's engineer was intentionally vague but said the oscillators were
>>> indeed switched out of circuit on the counter with Ext Ref signal applied. These questions were related to several 53132A's I have seen configured with a small board back near the Ext Ref input (OPT H01 I think) that appeared to Switch the internal reference out of circuit. Agilent would not share information on the option. My question to Agilent is why sell an option and be unwilling to say what it does or how your stock unit functions?
>>> Thomas Knox
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: tvb at leapsecond.com
>>>> Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 09:38:28 -1000
>>>> To: time-nuts at febo.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] strange behavior of 53230A or is the light on,    but nobody in?
>>>>
>>>> Bob,
>>>>
>>>> I'm wondering if you (or any else) has measured the PLL performance of the 53230-series?
>>>>
>>>> I agree it will "clean up the crud" but this assumes the ext ref is dirtier than the internal osc.
>>>>
>>>> What I found instead was that if you use a good external ref the PLL actually makes it worse. This was very disappointing. The XO version of the counter performed worse than the OCXO version even with a maser as the ext reference. Did your reading of the schematic show a way to directly use the ext ref, bypassing the noisy PLL?
>>>>
>>>> The other thing I found was that the ref out signal was a very polluted copy of the ref in.
>>>>
>>>> /tvb (i5s)
>>>>
>>>>> On Feb 17, 2014, at 7:04 AM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi
>>>>>
>>>>> If you dig into the schematics (when they supplied them ? ):
>>>>>
>>>>> The external reference goes into a phase detector. It?s one of those digital ones that can lock up to many inputs. You could feed 3.33333333 MHz in as a standard input as well as 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 MHz. The internal oscillator (or an internal oscillator) is phase locked to the external input through a fairly narrow analog loop. The idea is to clean up the crud on the standard line.
>>>>>
>>>>> With no external reference, the PLL drops out and you go back to what ever the local reference is.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes there?s a little more to it than that and no the circuit is not exactly the same on every counter HP ever made.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Feb 17, 2014, at 7:55 AM, wb6bnq <wb6bnq at cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Mike,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The most likely answer is when you select external time base for an input, it disables the connection for the internal oscillator.  The external input signal is probably also routed straight to the reference output jack.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However, it would be good to read the manual, as they usually cover how those connections work.  Otherwise, perhaps someone that owns one could provide further insight.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bill....WB6BNQ
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mike cook wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Something that must be simple to explain, but that I can't get my head round.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I got a new 53230A.
>>>>>>> When first using it, I measured my T-Bolt 10MHz using the internal 10MHz timebase and it came up short of 10MHz, 9.999 998 5xx. I wasn't worried about it as the counter only has a TCXO internal oscillator. So I fired up my PRS10 and after leaving that on for some time, connected it to  Ext Ref. , changed to the ext time base and measured again. This time 10.000.000.00x. Then I switched the two references, measuring the PRS10 against the T-Bolt. Again I got 10MHz down to the 11th digit.
>>>>>>> All that looked good so I have been using it with either the PRS10 locked to GPS, or the T-Bolt as the external time base.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> After leaving it on (but not inactive) for a month, I did an Autocal. No problem.
>>>>>>> I was wondering if that would have changed the internal time base frequency, but no, using that still gave similar figures to the above.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So at that point I decided to measure the Internal TB against my reference. So I connected the Int. Ref. Out to channel 1, connected my PRS10 ref to Ext. Ref In, selected the EXT time base and found that the count was 10MHz dead on?????  I don't get that at all.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> in summary:
>>>>>>> DUT against internal TB counts < 10MHz.    To me that means that the internal timebase is a bit fast. Is that assumption correct?
>>>>>>> DUT against Ext.Ref counts 10MHz
>>>>>>> Internal TB against Ext.Ref counts 10MHz.       If my assumption above is correct, the count should be greater than 10MHz, no?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Can anyone shed any light on that?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>> and follow the instructions there.
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:05:16 -0700
> From: Tom Knox <actast at hotmail.com>
> To: Time-Nuts <time-nuts at febo.com>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] strange behavior of 53230A or is the light
> 	on, but nobody in?
> Message-ID: <COL130-W512573F54C8E1C86F4F0A3DF9B0 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
> Thanks Tom and Bob, I have been thinking of contacting Agilent for some time. I think they are a great company with some good products, but there are a few real blind spots in some current products. I also have seen in the past a genuine interest in listening. I would be willing to approach them if I could enlist your help in addressing potential changes to improve the product.
> Thanks;
> Thomas Knox
>
>
>
>> From: lists at rtty.us
>> Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 18:00:17 -0500
>> To: time-nuts at febo.com
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] strange behavior of 53230A or is the light on,	but nobody in?
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> Well at least this got me digging a little.
>>
>> If you grab a copy of the 53230A spec sheet and look under the external reference input, it?s pretty well described. It will accept 1, 5,10 MHz as an external reference. It will lock over a 1 ppm range with the XO option and 0.1 ppm with the OCXO option. Based on that I?d guess they are still using the same basic PLL approach as on the older counters (5335 era).
>>
>> The ?Microsoft Windows inside? sticker on the back of the counter was a bit of a surprise ?.
>>
>> Bob
>>
>> On Feb 18, 2014, at 11:51 AM, Tom Van Baak (lab) <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:
>>
>>> TomK,
>>>
>>> If anyone has technical contacts deep within Agilent, let's see if this issue can be resolved. I would have bought a 53230A when it came out a few years ago but my eval units showed this clock noise problem. That plus the poor quality of the ref out made me think the designers were cutting corners, or had little experience in metrology, or maybe they thought this was "ok" for a bench instrument.
>>>
>>> Otherwise it's a really nice counter; the first one from Agilent than can actually do ADEV properly (since it is a time stamping counter).
>>>
>>> I should dig out my old data and send it to you. Maybe as group we can help them fix the problem.
>>>
>>> /tvb
>>>
>>>> On Feb 18, 2014, at 12:10 AM, Tom Knox <actast at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have asked Agilent
>>>> if stock versions of the 53230A and 53132A switched the internal oscillator out of circuit with an Ext Ref signal
>>>> applied. I thought
>>>> Agilent's engineer was intentionally vague but said the oscillators were
>>>> indeed switched out of circuit on the counter with Ext Ref signal applied. These questions were related to several 53132A's I have seen configured with a small board back near the Ext Ref input (OPT H01 I think) that appeared to Switch the internal reference out of circuit. Agilent would not share information on the option. My question to Agilent is why sell an option and be unwilling to say what it does or how your stock unit functions?
>>>> Thomas Knox
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> From: tvb at leapsecond.com
>>>>> Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 09:38:28 -1000
>>>>> To: time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] strange behavior of 53230A or is the light on,    but nobody in?
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if you (or any else) has measured the PLL performance of the 53230-series?
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree it will "clean up the crud" but this assumes the ext ref is dirtier than the internal osc.
>>>>>
>>>>> What I found instead was that if you use a good external ref the PLL actually makes it worse. This was very disappointing. The XO version of the counter performed worse than the OCXO version even with a maser as the ext reference. Did your reading of the schematic show a way to directly use the ext ref, bypassing the noisy PLL?
>>>>>
>>>>> The other thing I found was that the ref out signal was a very polluted copy of the ref in.
>>>>>
>>>>> /tvb (i5s)
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Feb 17, 2014, at 7:04 AM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you dig into the schematics (when they supplied them ? ):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The external reference goes into a phase detector. It?s one of those digital ones that can lock up to many inputs. You could feed 3.33333333 MHz in as a standard input as well as 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 MHz. The internal oscillator (or an internal oscillator) is phase locked to the external input through a fairly narrow analog loop. The idea is to clean up the crud on the standard line.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> With no external reference, the PLL drops out and you go back to what ever the local reference is.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes there?s a little more to it than that and no the circuit is not exactly the same on every counter HP ever made.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bob
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Feb 17, 2014, at 7:55 AM, wb6bnq <wb6bnq at cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Mike,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The most likely answer is when you select external time base for an input, it disables the connection for the internal oscillator.  The external input signal is probably also routed straight to the reference output jack.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> However, it would be good to read the manual, as they usually cover how those connections work.  Otherwise, perhaps someone that owns one could provide further insight.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Bill....WB6BNQ
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> mike cook wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Something that must be simple to explain, but that I can't get my head round.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I got a new 53230A.
>>>>>>>> When first using it, I measured my T-Bolt 10MHz using the internal 10MHz timebase and it came up short of 10MHz, 9.999 998 5xx. I wasn't worried about it as the counter only has a TCXO internal oscillator. So I fired up my PRS10 and after leaving that on for some time, connected it to  Ext Ref. , changed to the ext time base and measured again. This time 10.000.000.00x. Then I switched the two references, measuring the PRS10 against the T-Bolt. Again I got 10MHz down to the 11th digit.
>>>>>>>> All that looked good so I have been using it with either the PRS10 locked to GPS, or the T-Bolt as the external time base.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> After leaving it on (but not inactive) for a month, I did an Autocal. No problem.
>>>>>>>> I was wondering if that would have changed the internal time base frequency, but no, using that still gave similar figures to the above.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So at that point I decided to measure the Internal TB against my reference. So I connected the Int. Ref. Out to channel 1, connected my PRS10 ref to Ext. Ref In, selected the EXT time base and found that the count was 10MHz dead on?????  I don't get that at all.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> in summary:
>>>>>>>> DUT against internal TB counts < 10MHz.    To me that means that the internal timebase is a bit fast. Is that assumption correct?
>>>>>>>> DUT against Ext.Ref counts 10MHz
>>>>>>>> Internal TB against Ext.Ref counts 10MHz.       If my assumption above is correct, the count should be greater than 10MHz, no?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Can anyone shed any light on that?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>>> and follow the instructions there.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>>> and follow the instructions there.
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
>   		 	   		
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list
> time-nuts at febo.com
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>
> End of time-nuts Digest, Vol 115, Issue 79
> ******************************************
>

More information about the time-nuts mailing list