[time-nuts] Mechanical clocks and how they work
Heyo, Due to a certain someone, I was looking at how mechanical clocks work rather than working for most of the day. As I do not want you to miss out on the fun, I would like you to have a look at http://www.clockwatch.de It has quite a lot of animations that show how different part of a clock work and what the good/bad points of those are.. Attila Kinali -- _av500_ phd is easy _av500_ getting dsl is hard ___ 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] TrueTime AL-AK GPS receiver help
Does this AL-AK have a real GPS receiver in it? Does the unit have a board with a crystal of 16.368MHz. that is multiplied by 96 up to 1571.328, the mixing frequency to get to the GPS freq of 1575.42? Since the down convert-up convert is offered as an option perhaps TrueTime used an actual GPS receiver in all their units. It stands to reason (at least to me) using a stock off-the-shelf GPS receiver in all their boxes would be simpler than having to do a custom kluge to work at 4 mhz. If this user can find out if his box has an actual GPS receiver then the converter section could probably be bypassed. FWIW, the TrueTime XL-AK used an external up converter and down converter, model 142-6150. Says it's good for up to 1500 feet of RG58. Its manual is on line. It uses the above mixing scheme. Al, retired, mostly AKA k9si Someone on ebay advised me to contact your website in hopes that someone in your organization can help me with my TrueTime model AL-AK GPS Receiver. I need to send it to someone so that they can check it to see if it works and can track Satellites. This receiver has the onboard up/down convertor board that changes the receiver input frequency which is set at 4.092 MHz. I don't have the needed down converter at the antenna. I bought this receiver on ebay from someone who told me that he doesn't have the down converter as well and can't figure out how to get it to work at 1575.42 MHz. He also didn't know if this receiver can be setup for a 1575.42 MHz by removing the onboard converter and changing some DIP switches. If one of your members can at least check out the receiver at 4.092 MHz for satellite tracking That would be a big help ... snip ___ 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] TrueTime AL-AK GPS receiver help
Bob brings up all the additional details that are the reality of dealing with teh older gear. Especially the date offsets because of the 1024 week cycle. That is a real pain. But the reason to spend time on something like this is to understand something and to learn. I picked up the austron 2000 gps because it was a useful rack mount box. Then realized some of its unique qualities. That was the driver for reviving it. I was lucky that I was able to obtain some operational data and then later schematics. BUT it was still a heck of a reverse engineering and adapting process. I am pretty sure I shared that on time-nuts and will guess that must be 5 years ago now. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 5:58 PM, Bob Camp kb...@n1k.org wrote: Hi I guess the first question would be: Are we sure it’s an AL-AK and not an XL-AK? Past that it becomes a fairly involved process of, is it worth real money to get this up and running? If we are talking about a $20 eBay find that is worth another $5 to have somebody else get it running, the conversation is a real short one. If the AL-AK has some inherent value (it’s a working GPS disciplined Cs maybe) then putting a few hundred dollars into checking it out and getting it running might make sense. If it’s like most of the parts from that era, the delta between getting it checked and getting it running is pretty small. Once you *do* have it running, what do you have? 1) Leap second problems 2) GPS year rollover problems 3) Tracking issues 4) A noisy receiver with very few correlators 5) Software support issues This is an unusual box that is at least 20 years old. It *will* have at least some of the listed issues and may have all of them. Fixing them will be impossible. Why bring up all of the negatives? I for one have been sucked into this kind of thing a *lot* of times in the past. Just a few more this or that and it’ll be running fine. Much better to figure out the likely cost and outcome first. That’s *very* hard to do, and even harder to follow through on. If you can’t do the work yourself, the cost isn’t just lost time. This can cost real cash. Bob On Apr 30, 2015, at 12:50 PM, Tom Van Baak t...@leapsecond.com wrote: I received this email. Anyone have a good answer? Thanks, /tvb -- Someone on ebay advised me to contact your website in hopes that someone in your organization can help me with my TrueTime model AL-AK GPS Receiver. I need to send it to someone so that they can check it to see if it works and can track Satellites. This receiver has the onboard up/down convertor board that changes the receiver input frequency which is set at 4.092 MHz. I don't have the needed down converter at the antenna. I bought this receiver on ebay from someone who told me that he doesn't have the down converter as well and can't figure out how to get it to work at 1575.42 MHz. He also didn't know if this receiver can be setup for a 1575.42 MHz by removing the onboard converter and changing some DIP switches. If one of your members can at least check out the receiver at 4.092 MHz for satellite tracking That would be a big help ... -- ___ 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 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] RFTG-m-XO KS-24019 RS-422 Query
Bill, I have the KS-24361 units. This may also work with yours. When I connect a terminal to the J6 1PPS connector I see data similar to yours. This is sending the time. Here is an example from my unit: :000185426EE918A301DB :000185426EE919A301DC :000185426EE91AA301DD :000185426EE91BA301DE :000185426EE91CA301DF :000185426EE91DA301E0 Connect your terminal and try typing this: Please note that there is no character echo. You won't see what you type. ptim:tcod:cont 0 to turn off the time. then try: *IDN? See if the unit responds. if it responds try: diag:log:read:all? to display the log. You can turn the time display back on with: ptim:tcod:cont 1 If this works you may be able to use the Z38XX softrware to monitor your unit. I don't remember the URL where I downloaded this program. Search for Z38XX by Ulrich Bangert and you should be able to find it. You may need to patch the Z38XX software for use with your RTFG. Here is the patch info to make it work with the Z3811 unit. This is from the time nuts list: and here comes another trick: Ulrich's Z38XX can be persuaded to accept the Z3811 instead of an Z3805. For this to happen search with an Hex-editor in Z38XX twice for the string z3805 and replace this z3805 with z3811, save the changes and enjoy the various Views Ulrich provided. Götz Instead of replacing with z3811 You'll need to use the model that your unit returns with the *IDN? command. On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 2:04 AM, Bill Hawkins b...@iaxs.net wrote: Have the subject RFTG unit. Bought an RS-422 to USB converter, found a simple terminal emulator (PuTTY), and scoured KO4BB's site. Discovered that the pins for the otherwise unlabeled RFTG-m RS-422 INTERFACE drawing were reversed, and that you don't connect R to R and T to T. The diagnostic software on KO4BB's site will not run on modern Windows systems (sorry, I used Unix in the eighties but it's all windows now). Every second, PuTTY shows the string :11E109FB with the initial Failed status and :10E109FA when the green light comes on after about 20 minutes. Does anyone know how to decode that string (presumably hex)? The strings were copied from the PuTTY screen with ^C, not manually transcribed. The RFTG unit does not acquire GPS lock after 32 hours. I had hoped that the status message would tell me why it isn't locked. Note that this is the 1998 version, not the newer ones. Any clues to documentation appreciated. Bill Hawkins ___ 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. -- Luke Mester http://mesterhome.com/ ___ 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.
