[time-nuts] Prescaler

Dave M dgminala at mediacombb.net
Sun Mar 27 17:24:53 EDT 2016


Bob Albert via time-nuts wrote:
> Does anyone know of an inexpensive prescaler for a counter that goes
> beyond 2 GHz? I would actually like to find a kit but everything
> seems a bit pricy. I currently have capability of 500 MHz and that
> will stretch to about 700 with care. So a divide by 10 would be
> ideal.
>


If you're good at kit-building, you might take a look at the Ebay items 
160703629055, 181982380658, 400265187641, and 60703624281.  These are PCBs 
made to specifically fit a number of frequency divider chips.  Each board 
holds a single divider chip and associated components, such as the 
decoupling caps, bias resistors, and pads for interconnections.
A series of these boards that add up to a divide-by-100 can get you to 2 - 
5GHz easily. I've never used any of these boards or dividers, but I have 
used a few of the seller's amplifier boards, with great success.

There's also a construction article from Silicon Chip magazine (Oct, 2006) 
dedicated to constructing a 2.8 GHz 1000:1 prescaler for counters.  The PCB 
layout and all the active parts are available.  Send me an email for a copy 
of the article.

I don't know of any prescaler chips that get you a divide-by-10 prescaler at 
your target frequency range.  There might be (probably is) one available... 
I just haven't run across it.

BTW, which frequency counter do you have?  There might be a better solution 
for you than an external prescaler.

Cheers,
Dave M




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