RE: [time-nuts] Low cost synchronization
What about this: Use an NTP client running on a Smartphone. Such NTP clients are available for Pocket PCs, Symbian OS, etc. Dominik Schneuwly -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak Sent: samedi, 20. août 2005 21:00 To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Low cost synchronization Hi Mike, Sorry for the late reply. You raise an interesting question and here are some thoughts. 1. Crystal Modeling Standard 32 kHz crystals won't work. TCXO aren't good enough either. OCXO are too power hungry. A couple of quartz wrist watches are good to 5 or 10 seconds per year. This may be close enough for your needs. The Pulsar PRS10 is one example. I think they use dual mode crystals to achieve their exceptional accuracy and relative temperature insensitivity. With the quantities you are talking about a dual mode crystal may fit the requirement. Dual-mode crystals are a niche market, however, so making arrangements with a manufacturer will not be simple. 2. WWVB Receiver These are exceedingly cheap now and should fit all your requirements. Contact Rod Mack who has probably done more WWVB RD than anyone on the list (he did the Ultralink receivers using Temic chips). Email me offline for his contact info. WWVB reception quality is not an issue since it's only used to intermittently re-synchronize the internal XO. One decent reception every couple of days or even weeks will take care of your requirements. Note also that many WWVB chipsets are now global, meaning they will also receive signals from LF time services in Europe and Japan 3. GPS Receiver 4. GPS Time Receiver As many cell phones now include GPS receivers sizes and prices are dropping. But I'm guessing you are not going to meet your fob-size nor power specs with GPS (or other satellite nav systems). 5. Cellular What percent of your thousands to millions of users world-wide already have a cell phone? To me this is the obvious solution. I would guess all cell phones know the time to a millisecond internally and this means a billion people on the planet are already carrying just what you need. Battery life is not a problem because all users already know how to recharge theirs. Now if each brand of cell phone would just have a standardized 1PPS output connector you'd be all set. 6. TV Stations Two methods come to mind. The XDS timecode (used by PBS stations) is good in principle but perhaps not in practice. The other approach is to discipline a 32 kHz XO against the 3.58 MHz colorburst frequency. This seems dated, though. 7. Atomic Reference In 10 years maybe. 8. Other? 1) Look into an interface with Sirius/XM satellite radio. 2) Or piggy-back on the existing paging networks. 3) Lock onto the carrier of a high-power local AM or FM station. If these stations use Rb or GPSDO referenced carriers you'll get a long-term stable frequency for free. 3b) For extra credit use DSP. Since AM/FM radio and TV frequencies have assigned slots world-wide you can simultaneously receive many local stations and combine their frequency stabilities to a common mean time/frequency. This would make a wonderful project for someone; commercial or university. For any solutions that give you stable frequency only (XO, RF carriers, 60 Hz) you will need a way to set the initial time and to reset the time when the batteries fail. For any solutions that give you time only you will presumably need to convert from UTC to local time. Also, are you concerned with DST? At least with your requirements, you don't have to worry about leap seconds! /tvb http://www.LeapSecond.com ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Low cost synchronization, kitchen appliances
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chuck Harris writes: I met a violinist some years back who suffered from a 440Hz tinitus on his left ear. When he tuned his fiddle after that, it was 440.0Hz measured with a frequency counter. Did you make this measurement, or were you just told of it? What was the repeatablity? I did. Good, then you should remember some important details: Could he see the counter, or was the test done blind? What variety of counter (cycle counting, or reciprocal) ? What was the pitch variance from 440.0Hz? How did you deal with all of the sympathetic resonances that naturally occur within a violin? -Chuck ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Power lines and time
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chuck Harris writes: Uhm, sorry, that is just plain wrong. The Ferrantis (sp?) power meter which is the most widely used meter in the world is not frequency sensitive within a band of +/- 10% or more. I have never seen a power meter made by Ferranti in the US. Landis-gyr, definitely, but not Ferranti. To quote Landis-gyr's website: Sorry, not Ferranti, but Ferraris and not made by, but principle. You can read about it here: http://content.honeywell.com/sensing/prodinfo/solidstate/application/006464_1.pdf Here most of our meters are of the induction type, which work on the principles of a split-phase induction motor. They are very easy to recognize by their horizontal 4 inch corrugated aluminum disk that rotates (hopefully) slowly. That is exactly the kind I'm talking about, only they're not exactly split-phase because the offset fields are current vs voltage. Their frequency sensitivity is very low compared to other error factors. Most of the installed meters are class 2 (ie: up to 2% wrong) or worse and frequency is seldom allowed to fluctuate +/- 1% in any civilized grid. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
[time-nuts] Re: Power lines and time
Chuck Harris wrote: A 10% variation in line frequency would cause a 10% variation in power consumption registered. Induction type power meters will remain accurate with a 10% variation in power line voltage, however. Someday, our utilities will convert all of our meters to solidstate units which might not be so frequency sensitive, but that will be a few hundred billion dollars from now. In Italy, almost all of the meters have been replaced by solid state units, which are read remotely through signalling on the power lines. I feared that would have meant an increase in radio noise (I am a radioamateur), but so far I haven't noticed any. This system has the advantage that now the electrical company can apply different rates between day and night, without needing that the meter itself is able to keep the count of the time. At the start of each period a remote command changes the rate. 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Low cost synchronization, kitchen appliances
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chuck Harris writes: Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chuck Harris writes: I met a violinist some years back who suffered from a 440Hz tinitus on his left ear. When he tuned his fiddle after that, it was 440.0Hz measured with a frequency counter. Did you make this measurement, or were you just told of it? What was the repeatablity? I did. Good, then you should remember some important details: Could he see the counter, or was the test done blind? I'm not that daft buddy! :-) Yes, we didn't mess around, and yes, he could do it. We measured with 500msec period counting. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Power lines and time
At 10:00 AM 8/22/2005, you wrote: Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Bill Hawkins writes : Power companies bill on time-integrated power - watt-hour meters in the US. Watt-hour meters are still mostly driven by electric clocks, in a way. The frequency does matter. Uhm, sorry, that is just plain wrong. The Ferrantis (sp?) power meter which is the most widely used meter in the world is not frequency sensitive within a band of +/- 10% or more. I have never seen a power meter made by Ferranti in the US. Try Siemens or ABB then, Ferranti has been taken over if I recall. Landis-gyr, definitely, but not Ferranti. To quote Landis-gyr's website: Landis+Gyr Inc. is the world's leading supplier of electricity revenue meters. Our products include solid-state and electromechanical residential meters, a full line of solid-state commercial and industrial meters, high-end precision meters and extensive automated meter reading (AMR) solutions. You cannot make a credible claim of the most widely used meter in the world without including the US. We certainly have as many power meters as all of Europe. You do? Are you sure? Here most of our meters are of the induction type, which work on the principles of a split-phase induction motor. They are very easy to recognize by their horizontal 4 inch corrugated aluminum disk that rotates (hopefully) slowly. That is certainly the case of older meters and in many states. But is most definitely not true of newer meters in many jurisdictions. Many regulators in the US have been very slow on a world basis, to accept newer metering technology, the New York DPS only registering a wide range of fully solid state units in 2003. With the induction type power meter, power line frequency is very important in determining the hours part of kilowatt-hours. Quite true, hence the reason that many electricity sellers are pushing for the introduction of solid-state meters much quicker than many regulators are able to handle. A 10% variation in line frequency would cause a 10% variation in power consumption registered. Induction type power meters will remain accurate with a 10% variation in power line voltage, however. And herein lies a serious problem for electricity suppliers. With the problems of inadequate generating capacity and ever increasing demand, particularly in North America, regulators are directing distributors on occasions to drop nominal voltages to 100V in controlled brown-outs. Induction meters then, apparently, tend to read even lower, thus depriving the distributors of yet more income. Someday, our utilities will convert all of our meters to solidstate units which might not be so frequency sensitive, but that will be a few hundred billion dollars from now. In that case the US will be playing catch up with parts of Canada, Europe, most of Asia and Oceania where solid state meters, often with remote reading are the norm rather than the exception - and synchronised mains frequency has become a fond memory. John Day -Chuck Harris ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Power lines and time
John Day wrote: I have never seen a power meter made by Ferranti in the US. Try Siemens or ABB then, Ferranti has been taken over if I recall. The term is actually Ferraris, after Galileo Ferraris, the inventer of the AC induction motor. As far as I can tell, he had nothing to do with watt-hour meters, as they weren't invented until 3 years after his death. You do? Are you sure? Pretty sure. we have at least 1 per household, and a whole pile for commercial establishments, and they are salted all over the place on traffic lights, billboards, street signs, ... Surely no place else in the world could be as stupid about such things as we are! And herein lies a serious problem for electricity suppliers. With the problems of inadequate generating capacity and ever increasing demand, particularly in North America, regulators are directing distributors on occasions to drop nominal voltages to 100V in controlled brown-outs. Induction meters then, apparently, tend to read even lower, thus depriving the distributors of yet more income. During a brownout, the power company is providing substandard power, and should be paid accordingly! 100V brownouts blow induction motors right and left. An induction motor will draw whatever current is necessary to meet its load requirements, regardless (to a point) of its supply voltage. In that case the US will be playing catch up with parts of Canada, Europe, most of Asia and Oceania where solid state meters, often with remote reading are the norm rather than the exception - and synchronised mains frequency has become a fond memory. There are plenty of remote reading meters in the US, but they all seem to be of the Ferraris type in their measurement transducers. -Chuck Harris ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
[time-nuts] Accuracy of a sound card
I measured the phase, frequency and Allan deviation of the sound card on my cheap PC. You'll enjoy the results: http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/sound-1pps/ If any of you with a high-end sound card want to repeat the experiment let me know. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
RE: [time-nuts] Power lines and time
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote, quoting me, Power companies bill on time-integrated power - watt-hour meters in the US. Watt-hour meters are still mostly driven by electric clocks, in a way. The frequency does matter. Uhm, sorry, that is just plain wrong. The Ferrantis (sp?) power meter which is the most widely used meter in the world is not frequency sensitive within a band of +/- 10% or more. You are correct, and I sit corrected. I was looking for a simple example of why frequency mattered. I did not feel good abut it as I wrote, but I didn't look it up. I knew that crossed-coil wattmeters were not sensitive to frequency as long as the coil inductance didn't matter. 1. It is unlikely that any power network just lets itself go, with no standard time/frequency to hold. The under-frequency relays would make that hazardous. Does not follow. Well, it doesn't follow from the watt-hour meter, but look at the larger network picture. The most certain way to tell that the network supplies and loads are not balanced is to measure the frequency. The frequency reflects the speed of the generators. Generator speed is determined by the balance between steam power to the turbine and load on the generator. Steam power determines fuel cost. If the frequency is used to determine power balance then it follows that all users of the network must agree on a nominal frequency. Given a nominal frequency and the ability to detect overload by dropping frequency then it is possible to protect the network before the generators come to a stop. This is not linear because the load goes up as frequency drops and transformer iron saturates. As an example of the relationship between steam power and frequency, there was a paper mill with three generators driven by co-generation turbines. That is, the local boilerhouse steam pressure had to be let down anyway, so turbines were used to drop 400 PSI steam to 30 PSI steam for low pressure equipment. It happened that an oil leak froze the governor for one of the turbines. The operator wanted to shut the turbine down, but forgot his training. Instead of closing the manual steam valve, he tripped the generator's circuit breaker. This left the generator and turbine with no load and full steam. The turbine and generator rapidly accelerated beyond their rated speeds. The generator disintegrated and threw cubic foot chunks of metal through the roof. No one was killed, somehow, but the operator was badly burned by escaping steam. Bottom line, it is within reason that some networks do not synchronize clocks with something standard. It is not reasonable that the network dispatchers do not care about frequency and do not work to regulate it. It's not regulated with any accuracy that we'd spend much time discussing on this list but it is regulated. When I toured the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware dispatch center some years ago, I thought they had talked about keeping a daily cycle count. The count had economic importance, in that a high count meant that sources gave power away and a low count meant that users paid too much. I can't justify that in terms of the fact that power is VxI on the real axis. It has no frequency component. (Plain old VxI measured with separate meters is volt-amps and VxI on the imaginary axis is volt-amps reactive or VARS.) Too bad that there's no one that understands power dispatching that also has an interest in precision time. How many of you have collected a radio clock that was meant to compare time on a local power network with WWV or something more recent? Are they still being made? Regards, Bill Hawkins ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Power lines and time
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Bill Hawkins writes : 1. It is unlikely that any power network just lets itself go, with no standard time/frequency to hold. The under-frequency relays would make that hazardous. Does not follow. Well, it doesn't follow from the watt-hour meter, but look at the larger network picture. I didn't say it was not true, I only said it didn't follow from your argument about the power-meter :-) The specs for the Nordpool area sets some specific frequency bands, voltage bands and time constants for which regulation regime applies. The result is that the frequency is generally a tad on the low side, but well inside the tolerance, because nobody sees it as their job (and expense) to keep the average at 50Hz. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Accuracy of a sound card
On 8/22/05, Tom Van Baak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I measured the phase, frequency and Allan deviation of the sound card on my cheap PC. You'll enjoy the results: http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/sound-1pps/ If any of you with a high-end sound card want to repeat the experiment let me know. All common soundcards have an oscillator that is either a multiple of 48 kHz or of 44.1 kHz. They fake it for other sample rates. It would be interesting to see if the same experiment with a 48 kHz sample rate produced different results. Matt ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Alberto di Bene wrote: Tom Van Baak wrote: I measured the phase, frequency and Allan deviation of the sound card on my cheap PC. You'll enjoy the results: http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/sound-1pps/ If any of you with a high-end sound card want to repeat the experiment let me know. Unfortunately, while my 5328B has the HPIB interface, my PC doesn't, so I cannot collect data automatically, otherwise it would have been a very interesting experiment... 73 Alberto I2PHD If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better supported than other makes. PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive. I guess a modern sound card will not fit in an old PC with an ISA slot, but there is nothing to stop you using a modern PC with the high-end sound card, and an old PC with a cheap ISA card for the data collection. There are free drivers for FreeBSD, linux and possibly Windoze, but I am not sure about the latter. -- David Kirkby, G8WRB Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/ of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/ ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
From: David Kirkby [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:06:49 +0100 Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David, Unfortunately, while my 5328B has the HPIB interface, my PC doesn't, so I cannot collect data automatically, otherwise it would have been a very interesting experiment... If you have the money, Tektronix have a nice little Ethernet/IP - GPIB adapter. Stick it between your GPIB chain and LAN, surf into the webserver to configure it and then use the VXI-11 RPC-based interface and access your GPIB chain. Works really well. Can also be configured to work as a printer for at least Tektronix-compatible devices (HP and Tek did things differently because they could). If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better supported than other makes. PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive. Yes, but I was fortunate enought to get one for reasnoble money. I use the Linux GPIB drivers and my problems is more that I am a bad GPIB-programmer and have yeat to learn all the quirks. (Maybe my HP3457As isn't the best to use as a test-case, better bring up the HP5372A which I have done several projects on succsefully over the years). I guess a modern sound card will not fit in an old PC with an ISA slot, but there is nothing to stop you using a modern PC with the high-end sound card, and an old PC with a cheap ISA card for the data collection. There are free drivers for FreeBSD, linux and possibly Windoze, but I am not sure about the latter. You can download the drivers for Windoze from NI if you need to. They actually have quite good documentation online. Cheers, Magnus ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
[time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
David Kirkby wrote: If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better supported than other makes. I have an ISA GPIB card collecting dust on a shelf... I just don't have a PC with an ISA slot... probably I should find one at a ham swap fest... PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive. I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
RE: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
National Instruments sells (or at one time, sold) GPIB adapters that will connect to any port on your PC, including USB, parallel, RS-232, the drain in your bathtub, you name it. They are definitely the way to go. There are certain OS limitations; for instance, NT-based versions of Windows including 2K and XP don't support the ISA cards, so you'll have to use Win9x or Me with those if you want to use Windows. Most of the drivers are free at www.ni.com, but not all; I'm not sure, for instance, if the USB drivers are. Make sure you can get the drivers, and that they will work with your OS, before you buy. PCI-GPIB cards aren't really all that pricy -- I see several completed auctions that closed at less than $150. That's about what I paid for mine. -- john, KE5FX -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Alberto di Bene Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 3:46 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card David Kirkby wrote: ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
From: Alberto di Bene [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:45:59 +0200 Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] David Kirkby wrote: If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better supported than other makes. I have an ISA GPIB card collecting dust on a shelf... I just don't have a PC with an ISA slot... probably I should find one at a ham swap fest... PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive. I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? Hmm... I once had a project in which I grab junk from the lab-bench and started designing a GPIB module which sat of the parallel port. It would probably have worked if I was getting the parallel port drivers of the ground, which I wasn't at that time. It was built around a Z80 PIO and a pair of TTLs for clock etc. Another project was to use my FPGA development board, again the parallel port driver stuff ate me up and now the FPGA chip is toast. :P I do have the GPIB code in VHDL at least, and my plan was to use the EPP style of parallel port control, which is *really* handy for DIY hardware/firmware haning of a parallel port. I have the parallel port driver stuff under sufficient control these days, so I could bring back those efforts when my backlog of other projects have ceased to hog my free time, which if no other project comes around would but it 5-10 years away. ;O) If one gets a GPIB chip, hooking it up and fiddle a little with driver should not be eternally difficult these days. Cheers, Magnus ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Alberto di Bene wrote: David Kirkby wrote: If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better supported than other makes. I have an ISA GPIB card collecting dust on a shelf... I just don't have a PC with an ISA slot... probably I should find one at a ham swap fest... PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive. I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... Yes. For Solaris drivers, they want more than the cost of the card!! I think the drivers were 10 UKP more than the card last time I looked. But the cards have gone up quite a bit since then, so perhaps not any more. But I got my Solaris drivers in a copy of Labview for Solaris. I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? You can get a USB based GPIB adapter that is less than a PCI based one. But they are still not cheap. An old PC is probably your best bet. 73 Alberto I2PHD -- David Kirkby, G8WRB Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/ of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/ ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
[time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
An old PC is probably your best bet. Before I start hunting for an old PC with an ISA slot, does anybody know if Capital Equipment Corporation (the maker of my ISA GPIB card) is still in business ? I am fearing that finding drivers for this card won't be that easy... 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
[time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Alberto di Bene wrote: I am fearing that finding drivers for this card won't be that easy... I was wrong ! I have just found the drivers here : http://www.cec488.com/gpibupgd.html A free download... now the quest for the ISA PC can start... :-) 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Alberto di Bene wrote: An old PC is probably your best bet. Before I start hunting for an old PC with an ISA slot, does anybody know if Capital Equipment Corporation (the maker of my ISA GPIB card) is still in business ? I am fearing that finding drivers for this card won't be that easy... 73 Alberto I2PHD No idea, but National Instruments ISA cards are selling as little as $9.99, so buying a NI one will not break the bank and will I am sure be a lot less hassle. For some unknown reason, this ISA GPIB card made Waters (who??) http://cgi.ebay.com/WATERS-HPLC-ISA-GPIB-CARD-FULL-SIZE-LAC-E-EC_W0QQitemZ7537580605QQcategoryZ78217QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem starting at $179 never got a single bid. I really can't understand why nobody took such a wonderful oppotunity to own a card. -- David Kirkby, G8WRB Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/ of if you live in Essex http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/ ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? 73 Alberto I2PHD Alberto, I do almost all my logging with RS-232. It has the advantage that it's OS-independent; i.e., it requires no device drivers (since almost any OS supports RS-232 out-of-the-box). You can find cheap, surplus RS232-GPIB converters which will work well on a HP 5328A. To get more serial ports on a PC I use 4- or 8-way USB-serial converters. Again these can be found surplus for next to nothing. My favorite are those by Edgeport. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
RE: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Agilent also now has a USB to GPIB converter. Of course it's several hundred dollars also, and uses the Agilent I/O libraries. Not sure, but I think that it only supports Windoze. I'll check with some of my buddies that survived to see it that's the case. Daun -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Tom Van Baak Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 10:43 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? 73 Alberto I2PHD Alberto, I do almost all my logging with RS-232. It has the advantage that it's OS-independent; i.e., it requires no device drivers (since almost any OS supports RS-232 out-of-the-box). You can find cheap, surplus RS232-GPIB converters which will work well on a HP 5328A. To get more serial ports on a PC I use 4- or 8-way USB-serial converters. Again these can be found surplus for next to nothing. My favorite are those by Edgeport. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
RE: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
I _strongly_ recommend National Instruments for anything GPIB-related. It is much cheaper on eBay than buying anything new from Agilent, and much better for your sanity than buying anything from an unheard-of GPIB manufacturer. I write a fair amount of homebrew TM software; most of it is available for free with full source code, and it all requires NI488.2 hardware, because that's what I have. (Not to thread-jack, but I just released a nifty new phase-noise utility that duplicates most of the functionality of the HP 85671A package, for instance -- see http://www.speakeasy.org/~jmiles1/ke5fx/pn.htm). I have a lot of respect for NI as a company due to their quality hardware, good documentation, and ongoing free support for older products. -- john, KE5FX -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Daun Yeagley Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 7:50 PM To: Tom Van Baak; Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: RE: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card Agilent also now has a USB to GPIB converter. Of course it's several hundred dollars also, and uses the Agilent I/O libraries. Not sure, but I think that it only supports Windoze. I'll check with some of my buddies that survived to see it that's the case. Daun -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Tom Van Baak Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 10:43 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card I know :-( I checked the NI prices and for such a card they want a couple hundreds Euros or more... I am wondering... I know of the existence of USB = RS232 adaptors. May be someone sells also USB = GPIB converters ? Nobody knows ? 73 Alberto I2PHD Alberto, I do almost all my logging with RS-232. It has the advantage that it's OS-independent; i.e., it requires no device drivers (since almost any OS supports RS-232 out-of-the-box). You can find cheap, surplus RS232-GPIB converters which will work well on a HP 5328A. To get more serial ports on a PC I use 4- or 8-way USB-serial converters. Again these can be found surplus for next to nothing. My favorite are those by Edgeport. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts ___ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
