Re: [time-nuts] Beaglebone NTP server
Hi Gabs, I have a Z3805A and a Beaglebone, and would like to set up an NTP server for the lab. Any kernel drivers and/or setup hints would be appreciated :) Cheers, Henry = Henry. Maybe my notes using Linux on the Raspberry Pi might help? http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-NTP.html Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Beaglebone NTP server
On 26/03/14 23:18, Brian Lloyd wrote: Well, yeah. I figured that I would run the 1pps from my T-bolt to a GPIO line with appropriate clamping to 3.3V. But if anyone has done this before and run into anything of note, that would be nice to know ahead of time. Can I suggest you consider FreeBSD ? You can use the TIMER4-7 input pins as PPS input for a better PPS. See the following URL for details: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2013-February/004769.html If I recall correctly, the patch is in the FreeBSD 10 snapshots for the Beaglebone, so you don't need to apply it, but you will need to enable PPS and ensure one of the four TIMER pins is set to input in the DTS and recompile. Iain ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Beaglebone NTP server
Hello all, School's about to end so I can finally work on this. I think there is a standard GPIO PPS driver, configured using the device tree but I haven't tried that. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] TSIP protocol for T-Bolt
hi Alex, thanks for writing in German (vielen Dank). Tom made all the manuals available now, so you can fetch them here: http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/tbolt/manual.htm herzliche Grüße Götz PS:Ich bin ebenfalls Elektroingenieur im Ruhestand. (i am also an electronics engineer, retired now) Am 26.03.2014 18:43, : Hallo Götz, ich bin kein time nut, aber ich bin ein Frequency nut, und einer, nach Amerika verschollene deutsche Elektroingenieur in Ruhestand und Funkamateur KJ6UHN, und icgh habe den Thunderbolt, die Hardware, und deswegen moechte Sie hoeflichst fragen diese i've found 3 pdf Thunderbolt-Manuals identified as: -V3 from 2000 -V3 from 2003 and -V1 from 2012 zu zuschicken mit besten Dank im Voraus 73 KJ6UHN Alex On 3/26/2014 9:13 AM, Götz Romahn wrote: hi all, as is my commentent to /tvb's question. Hope it helps, Götz Tom, i've found 3 pdf Thunderbolt-Manuals identified as: -V3 from 2000 -V3 from 2003 and -V1 from 2012 Differences are in the Report Packet 0x8F-AC Data Format pp A62,A62 and 81. If you compare, there are differences among Byte 1 (Receiver Mode) Bits 5 and6, Byte 13 (Disciplining Activity) Bits 8 and 9 Bytes 8,9 (Critical Alarms) Bits 1,2,3 Bytes 10,11 (Minor Alarms) Bits 9 and 11 (and yes, Bit 11 is set from my Tbolt (Firmware V3.00) if I remember correctly). Use of Bit 10 (EEPROM invalid) is not decribed. I have not it tested though :-) A rather reliable reference are Messages from Thunderbolt Monitor V2.60. regards Götz Am 26.03.2014 15:05, : but beware, no single document related to Thunderbolt from Trimbles website is complete nor fully correct. Can you give me an example of some TBolt command that is not in the TBolt document? As a reference you may use my code of a simple Tbolt-Monitor you will here: http://www.romahn.info/tbolt2lcd/ regards Götz Nice. Thanks for posting that. Thanks, /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] GPS-18x behaving weirdly
I've got some GPS-18x LVC units i'm using for a time reference, and they're showing an odd behavior: the position isn't updating. I moved them across the US (from Los Angeles to the east coast), and when I powered them up here, it's returning the LA Lat/Lon (34N,118W), the (reasonably correct) UTC time and date, but never getting a fix. In theory, this should be like a cold start, and in 45 seconds, it should reacquire the satellites it can see from scratch, but it's not. I got one to start going by running the Garmin configuration program and setting the current position (not all that accurately, within 1 degree lat/lon), and it started running. The other doesn't seem to want to come alive. I'm assuming that it's just running the clock forward based on it's internal low power clock/battery. I haven't checked for the 1pps output (no scope here, for one thing..and I'm not quite ready to write some software to probe the RS232 pins to see if it's there. Has anyone seen a similar behavior? I've tried the power cycling, and the Garmin reset command. I've not done the clear non-volatile memory which makes it forget the almanac. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Beaglebone NTP server
You know, we have two threads going on here for both GPSDOs and NTP servers. Frankly, the device I want in my shack is a box that does both. I would love to have a BBB be an NTP server but also discipline an OCXO. I would like it to have a nice distribution amp as well for the 10MHz reference signal. Lastly, it should probably have a really cool Nixie tube display of UTC. (OK, LCD is cheaper but not nearly as cool. Maybe big, bright, 7-segment LED displays?) -- Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN/J79BPL 706 Flightline Drive Spring Branch, TX 78070 br...@lloyd.com +1.916.877.5067 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Greetings from Wales. I'm not sure whether this august forum is the appropriate place to ask a question about PC timekeeping, but in the hope that someone can point me in the right direction I'll ask anyway ;-) I have just replaced Windows XP with Windows 7. The PC involved (a fairly elderly 2.4GHz Core2 machine) runs an application called 'PlanePlotter' which requires accurate timekeeping and mandates Meinberg's NTP software. Using the UK pool.ntp.org servers as a reference source this has worked very well under XP for several years and the clock was seldom more than a few milliseconds out. Under Windows 7, however, the clock can be anything up to 0.2s awry and the offset is very erratic. The daily loopstats graph looks like a section through a mountain range. I have carefully checked all settings and combed the internet for suggestions but can see no reason for the sharply degraded performance. Is there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? Many thanks in advance. John ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Hanging bridge question
Some people say: HP = High Price Sorry, couldn't resist! :) On 3/26/2014 6:10 PM, time-nuts-requ...@febo.com wrote: Message: 3 Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 17:47:36 -0400 From: Bob Camp li...@rtty.us To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement time-nuts@febo.com Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Hanging bridge question Message-ID: 2674b568-04b1-4ebc-ac6d-d7f4dd347...@rtty.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Hi HP = Hewlett Packard Bob On Mar 26, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Matthew Martin dr_g...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi, Just a quick question from a novice. Sometimes I see abbreviations here and don't know, but usually I can make a good guess. Your first paragraph, HP is perhaps high precision? Just want to make sure I am not missing some other meaning. Thanks, learning a lot from reading this group! Matt Martin ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
At 08:59 AM 3/27/2014, John Nelson wrote: there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? I've had some luck on win7 by setting maxpoll to 8. -- newell ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] GPS-18x behaving weirdly
From: Jim Lux [] Has anyone seen a similar behavior? I've tried the power cycling, and the Garmin reset command. I've not done the clear non-volatile memory which makes it forget the almanac. === What firmware are those units running? Is it the latest? 3.90? Maybe blowing the firmware would reset the position? Otherwise, I do have a simple program for monitoring the serial port: http://www.satsignal.eu/software/net.htm#SerialPortLEDs Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
On 2014-03-27 07:59, John Nelson wrote: Greetings from Wales. I'm not sure whether this august forum is the appropriate place to ask a question about PC timekeeping, but in the hope that someone can point me in the right direction I'll ask anyway ;-) I have just replaced Windows XP with Windows 7. The PC involved (a fairly elderly 2.4GHz Core2 machine) runs an application called 'PlanePlotter' which requires accurate timekeeping and mandates Meinberg's NTP software. Using the UK pool.ntp.org servers as a reference source this has worked very well under XP for several years and the clock was seldom more than a few milliseconds out. Under Windows 7, however, the clock can be anything up to 0.2s awry and the offset is very erratic. The daily loopstats graph looks like a section through a mountain range. I have carefully checked all settings and combed the internet for suggestions but can see no reason for the sharply degraded performance. Is there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? NTP list - setup at http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions - might be better. Search archives for relevant topics. Power saving is more ubiquitous with Win 7 and it defaults to Balanced, with high jitter, and system changes make it a less consistent timekeeper than XP - Windows 8 is better. Ensure your BIOS is set to as much as possible disable spread spectrum (reduces RFI) and sleep states (reduces power). Go to Control Panel/Power, ensure your Power profile is set to High Performance and Put the computer to sleep is set to Never, then go into Advanced settings and set more things to Maximum Performance, Never, Disabled, or 100% as appropriate. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Win7 has a higher requirement for system resources than XP. This is not generally a bad thing as it is doing a lot more but still... How much RAM do you have installed. Open your Task Manager/Performance and see what your load is. Also, the PlanePlotter website says that it runs on XP -- are you running something else that could load the system to the point where Win7 stutters? http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm Dave -Original Message- From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of John Nelson Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 07:00 To: time-nuts@febo.com Subject: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7 Greetings from Wales. I'm not sure whether this august forum is the appropriate place to ask a question about PC timekeeping, but in the hope that someone can point me in the right direction I'll ask anyway ;-) I have just replaced Windows XP with Windows 7. The PC involved (a fairly elderly 2.4GHz Core2 machine) runs an application called 'PlanePlotter' which requires accurate timekeeping and mandates Meinberg's NTP software. Using the UK pool.ntp.org servers as a reference source this has worked very well under XP for several years and the clock was seldom more than a few milliseconds out. Under Windows 7, however, the clock can be anything up to 0.2s awry and the offset is very erratic. The daily loopstats graph looks like a section through a mountain range. I have carefully checked all settings and combed the internet for suggestions but can see no reason for the sharply degraded performance. Is there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? Many thanks in advance. John ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Greetings from Wales. I'm not sure whether this august forum is the appropriate place to ask a question about PC timekeeping, but in the hope that someone can point me in the right direction I'll ask anyway ;-) I have just replaced Windows XP with Windows 7. The PC involved (a fairly elderly 2.4GHz Core2 machine) runs an application called 'PlanePlotter' which requires accurate timekeeping and mandates Meinberg's NTP software. Using the UK pool.ntp.org servers as a reference source this has worked very well under XP for several years and the clock was seldom more than a few milliseconds out. Under Windows 7, however, the clock can be anything up to 0.2s awry and the offset is very erratic. The daily loopstats graph looks like a section through a mountain range. I have carefully checked all settings and combed the internet for suggestions but can see no reason for the sharply degraded performance. Is there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? Many thanks in advance. John === John, Two suggestions: - stop NTP, delete the file etc\ntp.drift, and restart NTP. Sometimes it can get a wild value for no obvious reason. - be sure you are running the latest development version of NTP (4.2.7p434). See: http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html#updating At the back of my mind is a bug report suggesting using a poll interval of no greater than - possibly 7 - but the details aren't to hand. Also power-saving may be running the clock at different rates at different times. Perhaps try disabling some of the power-saving options. The only non-stratum-1 Windows 7 system I have here is Wi-Fi synced to a local stratum-1 server, and its performance is here: http://www.satsignal.eu/mrtg/performance_ystad.php It's currently working from a microADSB stick and uploading only, to Plane Plotter. You cam also want to ask on the Usenet newsgroup, also accessible through Google groups: nntp://comp.protocols.time.ntp https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.protocols.time.ntp Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
From: DaveH [] Also, the PlanePlotter website says that it runs on XP -- are you running something else that could load the system to the point where Win7 stutters? http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm Dave = Dave, The Web site is pessimistic (and in need of a minor update). Plane Plotter runs without issue or high resource loading on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8/8.1, 32-bit and 64-bit. The time accuracy it needs is just to within a second, so NTP normally provides more than adequate performance, but has the advantage of begin so much more robust than those (how I hate the term) Atomic Time programs. Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
Recently I happened across an eBay listing for an Antelope Audio Isochrome, a device that apparently packages an SRI-PRS10 rubidium oscillator and distribution amplifier in a box and sells to audiophiles for a price in the $10K range. For the fun of it I searched eBay for Audio Isochrome and found a number of listings. Clicking on the lowest priced (eBay 271432562792) for $4,500, there is a note that the SRS-10 has been replaced with a FEI-5660 which is said to be a PRS-10 equivalent. Is this the one that has been showing up from surplus cellphone equipment? Bruce ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Many thanks to those who replied. I've joined the NTP list and some messages in the archive suggest that the NTP/Win 7 timekeeping problem has already been raised there. In the meantime I've adjusted the power-management and some device settings as suggested. In response to a question, the machine has 4GB or RAM and the worst-case load reported by Task Manager is about 65%. Also, the PlanePlotter website says that it runs on XP -- are you running something else that could load the system to the point where Win7 stutters? I don't think so. PlanePlotter only seems to drive the system up to about 60-65% every now and then, presumably when it's downloading and uploading fixes. John ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
John Nelson wrote: Greetings from Wales. I'm not sure whether this august forum is the appropriate place to ask a question about PC timekeeping, but in the hope that someone can point me in the right direction I'll ask anyway ;-) I have just replaced Windows XP with Windows 7. The PC involved (a fairly elderly 2.4GHz Core2 machine) runs an application called 'PlanePlotter' which requires accurate timekeeping and mandates Meinberg's NTP software. Using the UK pool.ntp.org servers as a reference source this has worked very well under XP for several years and the clock was seldom more than a few milliseconds out. Under Windows 7, however, the clock can be anything up to 0.2s awry and the offset is very erratic. The daily loopstats graph looks like a section through a mountain range. I have carefully checked all settings and combed the internet for suggestions but can see no reason for the sharply degraded performance. Is there something about Windows 7 that degrades the performance of NTP? Or is there anything subtle I can check? The latest Windows bug which came to our attention is that some Windows versions don't apply small time adjustments at all. For example, if NTP applies an adjustment less than 16 ticks to the Windows time this is simply ignored by Windows. However, NTP expects the adjustment to have some effect, but if there is no effect then the next time comparison yields a much larger difference than expected, and thus causes another adjustment which is probably larger than necessary. As a summary this can cause large swings in the time adjustment values. A developer version of the NTP package contains a workaround for this Windows bug. The report and fix are discussed here: NTP Bug 2328 - Vista/Win7 time keeping inaccurate and erratic https://bugs.ntp.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2328 The problem is also explained on the Microsoft support page: SetSystemTimeAdjustment May Lose Adjustments Less than 16 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2537623 Even though the MS report only mentions Windows 7, the Windows Server 2008 kernel is similar to Windows 7 and has probably the same bug. So if you want to give it a try you can download a NTP developer version here which includes a workaround: http://people.ntp.org/burnicki/windows/ (The latest ntp-dev version also contains this fix, so alternatively you can use that one, as siuggested by David Taylor) You should try the release version first. Just unzip the ZIP archive, stop the NTP service, copy all extracted files over the files in your NTP installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\NTP\bin\), and restart the NTP service. We have found that this version has greatly improved the resulting accuracy on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 installations. Please note under Windows you should configure all upstream servers with a line reading server aa.bb.cc.dd iburst minpoll 6 maxpoll 6 where aa.bb.cc.dd has to be replaced with the host name or IP address of your NTP server. Generally you should use a polling interval as short as possible under windows to let let ntpd apply adjustments quickly. However, please don't use polling intervals below 6 with the developer version since this prevents the workaround from working correctly as discussed in the bug report. Also, higher polling intervals can cause problems under Windows. See: NTP Bug 2341 - ntpd fails to keep up with clock drift at poll 7 http://bugs.ntp.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2341 So our advice is to use minpoll 6 maxpoll 6 as indicated in the example above. The patched ntpd has caused no drawbacks on any Windows machines, but has improved accuracy on a number of installations. The directory http://people.ntp.org/burnicki/windows/ contains also some loopstats graphs as PDF files which show the improvement: http://people.ntp.org/burnicki/windows/bug2328_workaround.pdf http://people.ntp.org/burnicki/windows/bug2328_workaround_fine.pdf Martin ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Beaglebone NTP server
Thanks for all the hints everyone. Lots to try! Henry On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Iain Young i...@g7iii.net wrote: On 26/03/14 23:18, Brian Lloyd wrote: Well, yeah. I figured that I would run the 1pps from my T-bolt to a GPIO line with appropriate clamping to 3.3V. But if anyone has done this before and run into anything of note, that would be nice to know ahead of time. Can I suggest you consider FreeBSD ? You can use the TIMER4-7 input pins as PPS input for a better PPS. See the following URL for details: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2013-February/004769.html If I recall correctly, the patch is in the FreeBSD 10 snapshots for the Beaglebone, so you don't need to apply it, but you will need to enable PPS and ensure one of the four TIMER pins is set to input in the DTS and recompile. Iain ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] GPS-18x behaving weirdly
jim...@earthlink.net said: Has anyone seen a similar behavior? I've tried the power cycling, and the Garmin reset command. I've not done the clear non-volatile memory which makes it forget the almanac. I had one GPS-18x LVC go insane. I don't remember the details. I think it didn't say anything as compared to saying things that didn't make sense. I tried to take it apart, but never got very far. After a month or two, the battery ran down and it started working again. Since you have nothing to loose, I'd leave it running to see if it recovers. If anybody figures out how to update the firmware from a non-Windows environment, please let me/us know. -- These are my opinions. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
From: Martin Burnicki You should try the release version first. Just unzip the ZIP archive, stop the NTP service, copy all extracted files over the files in your NTP installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\NTP\bin\), and restart the NTP service. == Martin, Many thanks for your input and recommendations. I'm lucky here to have many stratum-1 servers on the LAN to which I can lock quite tightly, so I don't see some of the issues to which the Internet-only users are exposed. Just a small point, as the user needs to edit files associated with NTP (e.g. ntp.conf, leapseconds file), and as NTP needs to write files regularly itself (e.g. drift and any statistics), I have been recommending users to install outside the now protected C:\Program Files\ tree, into e.g. C:\Tools\NTP\. This applies to quite a few other programs where the user is still expected to be able to edit e.g. .INI files etc. This is the reasoning behind my installation instructions for Windows here: http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html I appreciate that there are other, perhaps better, ways to solve this problem, but at least my approach avoids the confusion caused to the user by Microsoft's virtualised directories, and the other consequences that mechanism has. Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
martin.burni...@burnicki.net said: Please note under Windows you should configure all upstream servers with a line reading server aa.bb.cc.dd iburst minpoll 6 maxpoll 6 There are lots of times when reducing maxpoll is reasonable, but I think an unqualified suggestion is not appropriate. maxpoll of 6 polls every 64 seconds. The default maxpoll is 10, or 1024 seconds, so that's a 16x[1] increased load on the servers. Some/many people would consider that to be abusive use of a resource. If you are using your servers, you can do whatever you want. If you are using your ISP's servers or a friends, then whatever they agree to is fine. The NIST servers are already heavily/over loaded. I'm not sure if the pool could stand a 16x increase in load. How many other countries run official NTP servers, and how heavily are they loaded? -- 1) It's not actually 16x because there is the ramp up time and ntpd automatically ramps down when it thinks it needs to. The latter often happens if the temperture/load changes. -- These are my opinions. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
Aren't those Isochromes lovely? Just the prettiness and the name itself seems to make spending $10K so much more worthwhile:-) The FE-5660 is one of those featured in the FEI 12 page Rubidium Standards brochure that's available online, not much data though and I've never seen a manual, but most of the more recent ex-cellphone units seem to have been the FE-5680s. Some FE5660s, from Tait T801 UHF base station references, became available on the UK surplus market a few years ago and I've always considered them a possible equivalent of the Efratom FRS series, physically and electrically quite similar, but have never considered either to be an equivalernt of the PRS10. They do all share the same case and connector style, as well as pinout, so perhaps made to another common telecom standard at least in that respect, but the PRS10 has a 1PPS conditioning option that neither of the others do and I seem to recall it also has lower phase noise, so I suspect someone is being a bit optimistic. Regards Nigel GM8PZR In a message dated 27/03/2014 17:40:55 GMT Standard Time, brucekar...@aol.com writes: Recently I happened across an eBay listing for an Antelope Audio Isochrome, a device that apparently packages an SRI-PRS10 rubidium oscillator and distribution amplifier in a box and sells to audiophiles for a price in the $10K range. For the fun of it I searched eBay for Audio Isochrome and found a number of listings. Clicking on the lowest priced (eBay 271432562792) for $4,500, there is a note that the SRS-10 has been replaced with a FEI-5660 which is said to be a PRS-10 equivalent. Is this the one that has been showing up from surplus cellphone equipment? Bruce ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
You should try the release version first. Just unzip the ZIP archive, stop the NTP service, copy all extracted files over the files in your NTP installation directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\NTP\bin\), and restart the NTP service. Very many thanks to Martin and David for the information. I've extracted 4.2.7p434, added maxpoll and minpoll statements to the CONF file and restarted. Fingers crossed for an improvement! More tomorrow when hopefully everything's settled down. John ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] GPS-18x behaving weirdly
On 3/27/14 8:53 AM, David J Taylor wrote: From: Jim Lux [] Has anyone seen a similar behavior? I've tried the power cycling, and the Garmin reset command. I've not done the clear non-volatile memory which makes it forget the almanac. === What firmware are those units running? Is it the latest? 3.90? Maybe blowing the firmware would reset the position? yes, running 3.90.. they're only a year old, and 3.90 came out earlier than that I think.. In any case, I set one of them to the present lat lon, within a few seconds of arc, and it seems to have acquired, changed the fix a bit, and then stopped again. The other one is resolutely stuck. I'm thinking there's got to be some simple option that I'm overlooking. It's kind of frustrating, because there's no NMEA sentence that tells you what the acquisition/search status is: just which ones it is trying to track and what the status is (unlocked, no data for all of them). Otherwise, I do have a simple program for monitoring the serial port: http://www.satsignal.eu/software/net.htm#SerialPortLEDs I'll try that.. Cheers, David ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
Recently I happened across an eBay listing for an Antelope Audio Isochrome, a device that apparently packages an SRI-PRS10 rubidium oscillator and distribution amplifier in a box and sells to audiophiles for a price in the Bruce, There have been threads about this on time-nuts every few years. The consensus is that audio companies that use atomic clocks are naive. It makes good marketing, though. Then again, speaking from experience, many of us make the same mistake: first thinking that precise time is the goal, then thinking that precise frequency is what counts, and later thinking that stability is what really matters, and only eventually realizing that all of these metrics are functions of tau, and that tau ranges from MHz/microseconds to years. Phase noise plots along with log-log ADEV plots start to tell the whole story. In the case of digital music, as far as I know, L(f) phase noise in the audio band and ADEV(tau) frequency stability from microseconds to seconds is far more important to the fidelity of digital recording and playback than absolute SI-accurate frequency or long-term timekeeping. Consequently, most atomic frequency standards are actually a poor choice as a sampling reference clock -- because their jitter (short-term noise) is no where near as good as a free-running, undisciplined, high-end OCXO. True, the PRS10 is a better choice than other cheap telecom rubidium's but none of these comes close to the performance of a premium OCXO. For the ultimate audio reference clock you want to avoid Rb, or GPSDO, or Cs for that matter. Instead pick a 1e-12 or 1e-13 stable OCXO, strap it to a 100 pound block of granite, and leave it alone. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] GPS-18x behaving weirdly
Not sure that I can help much. I have been following the thread and have numbers of units of this vintage and have used a few in projects. Those projects seemed to have funnies after a while. I am starting to have a bad feeling that if I look carefully I will find some of this perhaps going on. However if I go back into those projects at all I suspect I will shove a ublox in and be done. One was the TrueTime GOES DC468 sat simulator. Thanks for an idea. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Jim Lux jim...@earthlink.net wrote: On 3/27/14 8:53 AM, David J Taylor wrote: From: Jim Lux [] Has anyone seen a similar behavior? I've tried the power cycling, and the Garmin reset command. I've not done the clear non-volatile memory which makes it forget the almanac. === What firmware are those units running? Is it the latest? 3.90? Maybe blowing the firmware would reset the position? yes, running 3.90.. they're only a year old, and 3.90 came out earlier than that I think.. In any case, I set one of them to the present lat lon, within a few seconds of arc, and it seems to have acquired, changed the fix a bit, and then stopped again. The other one is resolutely stuck. I'm thinking there's got to be some simple option that I'm overlooking. It's kind of frustrating, because there's no NMEA sentence that tells you what the acquisition/search status is: just which ones it is trying to track and what the status is (unlocked, no data for all of them). Otherwise, I do have a simple program for monitoring the serial port: http://www.satsignal.eu/software/net.htm#SerialPortLEDs I'll try that.. Cheers, David ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
The audio marketplace is really weird. For many the goals is not sound quality but bragging rights I spent more money then you did. or My ears are so good I can hear if a cable as been swapped end for end. Some even think they can hear the difference between gold and nickel pated AC mains power plugs. There is one good reason for long-term stable frequency reference in audio, it's not in home playback equipment but in recording. You like two one hour recordings that have the same duration to also have EXACTLY the same number of samples. I've seen errors where two recorders where running independently and later when played back using a common clock they got out of sync because one had a very slightly different sample rate. This is no different then in the analog recording world if one tape machine is faster. They fixed this by using multi-track machines up to about 24 audio tracks Rubidium makes some sense because tracks recored weeks apart and/or a continent apart can then be exactly sample per sample in sync. But for home use in playback. It's like gold plated speaker wires, just taking the mark's money. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Tom Van Baak t...@leapsecond.com wrote: Recently I happened across an eBay listing for an Antelope Audio Isochrome, a device that apparently packages an SRI-PRS10 rubidium oscillator and distribution amplifier in a box and sells to audiophiles for a price in the Bruce, There have been threads about this on time-nuts every few years. The consensus is that audio companies that use atomic clocks are naive. It makes good marketing, though. Then again, speaking from experience, many of us make the same mistake: first thinking that precise time is the goal, then thinking that precise frequency is what counts, and later thinking that stability is what really matters, and only eventually realizing that all of these metrics are functions of tau, and that tau ranges from MHz/microseconds to years. Phase noise plots along with log-log ADEV plots start to tell the whole story. In the case of digital music, as far as I know, L(f) phase noise in the audio band and ADEV(tau) frequency stability from microseconds to seconds is far more important to the fidelity of digital recording and playback than absolute SI-accurate frequency or long-term timekeeping. Consequently, most atomic frequency standards are actually a poor choice as a sampling reference clock -- because their jitter (short-term noise) is no where near as good as a free-running, undisciplined, high-end OCXO. True, the PRS10 is a better choice than other cheap telecom rubidium's but none of these comes close to the performance of a premium OCXO. For the ultimate audio reference clock you want to avoid Rb, or GPSDO, or Cs for that matter. Instead pick a 1e-12 or 1e-13 stable OCXO, strap it to a 100 pound block of granite, and leave it alone. /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Hi David My question was not that it runs on XP, I was asking if you are running some other software on your Win7 machine that might occasionally hit up the system resources to the point where the system stutters. Backup programs can do this. Applications that look for newer versions when they load can cause a network hit. Lots of stuff. Java and Flash are notorious for causing memory and timing problems. Cheers! Dave -Original Message- From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of David J Taylor Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 09:57 To: 'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement' Subject: Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7 From: DaveH [] Also, the PlanePlotter website says that it runs on XP -- are you running something else that could load the system to the point where Win7 stutters? http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm Dave = Dave, The Web site is pessimistic (and in need of a minor update). Plane Plotter runs without issue or high resource loading on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8/8.1, 32-bit and 64-bit. The time accuracy it needs is just to within a second, so NTP normally provides more than adequate performance, but has the advantage of begin so much more robust than those (how I hate the term) Atomic Time programs. Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@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@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
On 3/27/14 4:10 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote: Recently I happened across an eBay listing for an Antelope Audio Isochrome, a device that apparently packages an SRI-PRS10 rubidium oscillator and distribution amplifier in a box and sells to audiophiles for a price in the True, the PRS10 is a better choice than other cheap telecom rubidium's but none of these comes close to the performance of a premium OCXO. For the ultimate audio reference clock you want to avoid Rb, or GPSDO, or Cs for that matter. Instead pick a 1e-12 or 1e-13 stable OCXO, strap it to a 100 pound block of granite, and leave it alone. A precision machined, finely crafted 100 pound block of granite (which isn't all that big.. 1/3 cubic foot or so?) selected from the most acoustically perfect granite by trained audiogranite craftsmen. The relative ratios of feldspar, hornblende and quartz are chosen for each installation according to the type of music and the vital harmonics of the listener. If two different people will be listening (obviously not at the same time, because only one can be at the perfect point between the loudspeakers), you need a mixture of granites. More seriously, I'm assuming you're advocating rock for the thermal mass and/or mechanical. What about a 100 pound box of sand? ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
More seriously, I'm assuming you're advocating rock for the thermal mass and/or mechanical. What about a 100 pound box of sand? Mechanical. I figured a OCXO might be susceptible to microphonics, especially in a recording studio. But if it's down to the level of 1 lsb of the digital sampling, then no worries. Has anyone on the list ever measured this effect, even on a cheap crystal? /tvb ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator
no, No, NO granite! Granite tends to be rather radioactive (particularly avoid the pink stuff). Any audiofool worth his tin ears can't have no stinkin' alpha/beta/gamma particles mucking with his music! BTW, before I bought my house, I tested all the granite surfaces with my rather nice scintillator. The real estate agents were rather bemused... but when one bought his own house had me give it the once over... he had read up on the subject.. Oh, and I've never seen a fireplace that didn't tick like a mother... --- A precision machined, finely crafted 100 pound block of granite ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
Hi David My question was not that it runs on XP, I was asking if you are running some other software on your Win7 machine that might occasionally hit up the system resources to the point where the system stutters. Backup programs can do this. Applications that look for newer versions when they load can cause a network hit. Lots of stuff. Java and Flash are notorious for causing memory and timing problems. Cheers! Dave == My apologies, Dave. When I looked at the Web site I saw that the works on all Windows was clearly stated. You ask a good question, but in my experience with NTP load from other software has not been a major issue (NTP runs at realtime priority), except in the higher CPU temperature that extra load can cause, and therefore change the frequency of the low-cost CPU crystal on the motherboard, and hence NTP will run at a higher offset while it is correcting for the new frequency. This effect clearly shows on one of my PCs which has a regular disk-defragmentation job - 100% CPU and also higher disk load and temperature - causing the spikes on the graphs: http://www.satsignal.eu/mrtg/bacchus_ntp_2.html The is a very old PC running Windows 2000 on a Pentium III 550 MHz - remember those? Even then, the spikes are at the millisecond level, not the fraction of a second level John was reporting. Cheers, David -- SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements Web: http://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-tay...@blueyonder.co.uk ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] NTP and Windows 7
I used David's plotting program and determined the MS antivirus (MS security essentials) would interfere with NTP. Possibly the additional CPU load raised internal temperature, which in turn effected the RTC. And of course, the work load itself could have been an issue. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
