Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Hi John, Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... -Chuck Harris John Seamons wrote: Boards from the second build of the 5370 processor replacement board project are now available. Details here: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html Please email me off-list with any non general-interest questions. Thanks, 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 10/8/2014 8:46 AM, Chuck Harris wrote: Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... ? I believe the only significant difference between the A and B is that the B had a slightly more robust input module, and came standard with the 10811 OCXO. There were some firmware differences related to GPIB handling, but the B firmware works in the A. I posted instructions a while back - http://www.flatsurface.com/5370A/ ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus On 10/08/2014 02:46 PM, Chuck Harris wrote: Hi John, Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... -Chuck Harris John Seamons wrote: Boards from the second build of the 5370 processor replacement board project are now available. Details here: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html Please email me off-list with any non general-interest questions. Thanks, 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. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Mike, The B is significantly faster in handling the GPIB interface, and other internal processor functions than the A... and John's board levels the playing field quite nicely. My 5370A runs much more quickly using John's board. I run the B firmware on my A counter. The input module changes are largely irrelevant to most users. -Chuck Harris Mike S wrote: On 10/8/2014 8:46 AM, Chuck Harris wrote: Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... ? I believe the only significant difference between the A and B is that the B had a slightly more robust input module, and came standard with the 10811 OCXO. There were some firmware differences related to GPIB handling, but the B firmware works in the A. I posted instructions a while back - http://www.flatsurface.com/5370A/ ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Magnus, As one of the charter users of the board, I know that. I was hoping that some of the other users might elaborate on what John's board has done for them that they wouldn't have done otherwise. The addition of a BBB inside of a 5370 just reeks of future capabilities, and possibilities. How have these opportunities been exploited? I quite enjoy being able to run my 5370 in the lab when I am in my office... but that is a luxury, not a need... for me. -Chuck Harris Magnus Danielson wrote: Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus On 10/08/2014 02:46 PM, Chuck Harris wrote: Hi John, Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... -Chuck Harris ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
I'll introduce another angle to the discussion: How have others handled bringing the USB or Ethernet interface outside of their 5370? There aren't exactly any extra holes in the back panel to run the cables through. Is removing the HPIB connector the way? Is anyone making a replacement panel that has a USB and an RJ connector mounted? I don't like leaving the lids off of my test equipment. -Chuck Harris Magnus Danielson wrote: Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 10/8/2014 9:52 AM, Chuck Harris wrote: The B is significantly faster in handling the GPIB interface, and other internal processor functions than the A... Why would that be? They use the same speed processor, and the GPIB interface is unchanged. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Mike, I can't say why, but both my experiences, and HP's manuals and catalogs say that it is the case. HP5370A 6000 samples/sec fast binary mode 10-20 readings/sec full format HPIB HP5370B 8000 samples/sec fast binary mode 10-20 readings/sec full format HPIB Everything is definitely peppier using John's board than either a B or A. -Chuck Harris Mike S wrote: On 10/8/2014 9:52 AM, Chuck Harris wrote: The B is significantly faster in handling the GPIB interface, and other internal processor functions than the A... Why would that be? They use the same speed processor, and the GPIB interface is unchanged. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
I plan on removing the rear panel and making appropriate size holes on a mill for USB connectors something like http://www.l-com.com/usb-panel-mount-usb-cables?cmp=011413 I will be using a shielded connector, same with the RJ45 connector http://www.l-com.com/ethernet-ecf-panel-mount-cat5e-rj45-jack-110-punchdown-style only using L-Com's site as a reference, in no way promoting them. In some of the industrial work I've done, I have used this type of connector/housing http://www.te.com/catalog/feat/en/c/20122 If you don't care about stuff radiating from your USB and Ethernet antennas, on the E just search panel mount (USB,ethernet) -pete On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 7:00 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: I'll introduce another angle to the discussion: How have others handled bringing the USB or Ethernet interface outside of their 5370? There aren't exactly any extra holes in the back panel to run the cables through. Is removing the HPIB connector the way? Is anyone making a replacement panel that has a USB and an RJ connector mounted? I don't like leaving the lids off of my test equipment. -Chuck Harris Magnus Danielson wrote: Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message 54354378.8020...@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes: How have others handled bringing the USB or Ethernet interface outside of their 5370? There aren't exactly any extra holes in the back panel to run the cables through. I ran mine out though a slightly enlarged ventilation hole in the right hand side panel. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
One future project would be to replace the front panel with a LCD/Touch Panel On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 6:56 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Hi Magnus, As one of the charter users of the board, I know that. I was hoping that some of the other users might elaborate on what John's board has done for them that they wouldn't have done otherwise. The addition of a BBB inside of a 5370 just reeks of future capabilities, and possibilities. How have these opportunities been exploited? I quite enjoy being able to run my 5370 in the lab when I am in my office... but that is a luxury, not a need... for me. -Chuck Harris Magnus Danielson wrote: Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus On 10/08/2014 02:46 PM, Chuck Harris wrote: Hi John, Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... -Chuck Harris ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Oct 8, 2014, at 8:00 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Is removing the HPIB connector the way? Is anyone making a replacement panel that has a USB and an RJ connector mounted? I have looked into the mechanical issues of doing that, but haven't done a PCB layout yet. My plan was to include a USB isolation chip on the board so the USB connection has as much galvanic isolation as the transformer-coupled Ethernet. Also, I wanted to add a regulator to supply +5 on the internal side of the USB, driven from one of the large caps of the HP supply. That would provide some hold-up power for orderly shutdown of the Beagle on 5370 power-off. Alternatively, there would be some jumpers so the USB could bypass the isolator so the USB power could be supplied full-time from an external USB charger. That way the Beagle would run continuously for an instant on experience on 5370 power-up. There are some EMI/EMC and ground loop issues with all this. My guess is that if you use shielded Ethernet cable the shield/drain wire, and the shield/gnd wire of the USB, should probably be left floating on the 5370 end (i.e. non-shielded USB/RJ45 connectors on the PCB or making sure shielded connectors are isolated from the back panel). But I am no expert with such issues and would appreciate any advice. I kinda like PHK's solution: use a hole to get the cables out of there as quickly as possible. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Oct 8, 2014, at 6:46 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? I haven't done much of interest beyond the high speed binary-mode-over-Ethernet hack (about 39K meas/sec last time I checked). I'm not even sure how useful that is in a time-nut context. There are lots of possibilities though. Adding a timestamp counting mode would be pretty nice assuming you could get NTP on the Beagle working well. There is some code that allows a user application to generate content for the little integrated web server. So creating some plots on the instrument itself would be pretty easy (right now a browser connection shows you the display LEDs and accepts virtual button pushes). ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi You probably are better off doing time stamping relative to the 5370’s timebase than doing it relative to an external standard. Adding another error into the mix (NTP variability) is not going to help anything. All you really need is a “start of file” time/ date and a number that represents time since start of file. Bob On Oct 8, 2014, at 2:05 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: On Oct 8, 2014, at 6:46 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? I haven't done much of interest beyond the high speed binary-mode-over-Ethernet hack (about 39K meas/sec last time I checked). I'm not even sure how useful that is in a time-nut context. There are lots of possibilities though. Adding a timestamp counting mode would be pretty nice assuming you could get NTP on the Beagle working well. There is some code that allows a user application to generate content for the little integrated web server. So creating some plots on the instrument itself would be pretty easy (right now a browser connection shows you the display LEDs and accepts virtual button pushes). ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
John, Time-stamping is wonderful. But note -- it does not imply using NTP! Best to time-stamp with some sort of fine nanosecond or picosecond XO or OCXO or Rb or Cs or GPSDO -- and not against the gross millisecond or microsecond PC / SBC / hardware / software cauldron of NTP. /tvb There are lots of possibilities though. Adding a timestamp counting mode would be pretty nice assuming you could get NTP on the Beagle working well. There is some code that allows a user application to generate content for the little integrated web server. So creating some plots on the instrument itself would be pretty easy (right now a browser connection shows you the display LEDs and accepts virtual button pushes). ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
At that point, why not just remove the few remaining HP parts and put them in a new enclosure? :) On Oct 8, 2014, at 10:29, Pete Lancashire p...@petelancashire.com wrote: One future project would be to replace the front panel with a LCD/Touch Panel On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 6:56 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Hi Magnus, As one of the charter users of the board, I know that. I was hoping that some of the other users might elaborate on what John's board has done for them that they wouldn't have done otherwise. The addition of a BBB inside of a 5370 just reeks of future capabilities, and possibilities. How have these opportunities been exploited? I quite enjoy being able to run my 5370 in the lab when I am in my office... but that is a luxury, not a need... for me. -Chuck Harris Magnus Danielson wrote: Hi Chuck, The benefit is that you can use Ethernet straight into the 5370, you can get much higher sampling rates and well, we can have fun hacking up more functionalities into the 5370 native support if we like to. Cheers, Magnus On 10/08/2014 02:46 PM, Chuck Harris wrote: Hi John, Can you share with the group any interesting applications this new processor board has enabled? Other than turning the 5370A into a capable replacement for the 5370B... -Chuck Harris ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi The purpose of time stamping: You sample the phase of a signal and log the time at which you recorded the phase. If you then want frequency, you can take the delta time between stamps and the delta phase between stamps and get frequency. If both time and phase are very accurate, the resulting frequency estimate will be accurate as well. Some examples: Taking a PPS output and time stamping it to picoseconds is one way to do this. It is always a zero phase (rising edge for instance), so it drops back to a delta time measure. Looking at a 10 MHz sine wave with a counter is another way to do this. You likely also have a zero crossing, so again it’s a measure at zero phase, time stamped to picoseconds (or what ever). It both of the cases above, your instrument actually reads out a “delta time” between the edge / zero crossing any your time stamp. If you look at the delta time as a phase, then you do have phase / time stamp data. If you have a system that samples a beat notes out of a DMTD system (say with a good ADC), then you can indeed have a true phase number. The whole “is it delta time or delta phase” is one of those things that can be caught up on in by reading several dozen papers that argue the terms back and forth. The result is that common usage is to call it phase. Bob On Oct 8, 2014, at 4:26 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: On Oct 8, 2014, at 1:36 PM, Tom Van Baak t...@leapsecond.com wrote: Time-stamping is wonderful. But note -- it does not imply using NTP! Best to time-stamp with some sort of fine nanosecond or picosecond XO or OCXO or Rb or Cs or GPSDO -- and not against the gross millisecond or microsecond PC / SBC / hardware / software cauldron of NTP. Okay, then I didn't quite understand that requirement of time-stamping. I made a real mistake by not running the 5370's 10 MHz oven clock, that was available right there on a processor board pin, to a GPIO on the Beagle so it could be accurately counted with the built-in event counter and software overflow (that clock used to drive the processor clock of the old MC6800). A terminating resistor and level-shift are required if I remember correctly, so it would be slightly more effort than a blue wire fix. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
j...@jks.com said: I made a real mistake by not running the 5370's 10 MHz oven clock, that was available right there on a processor board pin, to a GPIO on the Beagle so it could be accurately counted with the built-in event counter and software overflow (that clock used to drive the processor clock of the old MC6800). A terminating resistor and level-shift are required if I remember correctly, so it would be slightly more effort than a blue wire fix. Another option would be to connect it to the clock-in pin so the CPU runs in lock step with a good clock. I'm assuming there is a PLL inside the chip so the exact value of the external clock doesn't matter as long as you are willing to patch the software that sets up the PLL. -- 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.
[time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Boards from the second build of the 5370 processor replacement board project are now available. Details here: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html Please email me off-list with any non general-interest questions. Thanks, 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 28/02/14 04:50, John Seamons wrote: On Feb 28, 2014, at 4:34 PM, Bob Camp li...@rtty.us wrote: Is there any performance data on how the card does with a 5370A and / or a 5370B compared to the original CPU on the exact same box? Put another way - does the counter get better or worse with the new card? I realize that an A will do some things with B firmware, that’s not the question I’m asking. I’m looking for A to A or B to B timing data. Yes. I made some measurements with the previous microcontroller-based board (48 MHz sam7x) versus the stock CPU card. I have not yet had a chance to repeat that exercise with the current board. Look at the 23-Jul-2011 entry on www.jks.com/5370/5370.html Very much dependent on what the measurement is, but a range of 5-72% faster. Early in the beta process there where an issue which caused incorrect readings and thus higher noise. It was resolved as I recall and noise level fell back to expected. Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 28/02/14 14:18, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message 87caf1a2-d281-4331-b019-b01b06f11...@rtty.us, Bob Camp writes: To me the next layer here is to see if the basic accuracy of the device can be improved in software. I have a hard time seeing how that would happen. I think one of the best chances would be to improve the phase noise of the 200MHz signal. But don't miss the fact that being able to make a LOT more measurements in the same time also improves noise statistically. What one possibly could do is to see if there is any round-off issues that causes any noise. The interpolator does not have a number-magic friendly gearing for decimal or binary numbers, unless you play some magic with it. Rounding off causes the interpolator points to be un-evenly distributed and by that adding a little noise to the measurement. However, I would look at the 200 MHz systematics first. This was only to show what you could possibly do to improve precision in software. With a hotter CPU you can naturally do smarter auto-triggers and auto-tunes and things like that. Doing a CNT-90 like frequency estimator would indeed be possible and provide better frequency measures. Frequency drift estimator would maybe be a nice addition? Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message 5311b3eb.1000...@rubidium.dyndns.org, Magnus Danielson writes: What one possibly could do is to see if there is any round-off issues that causes any noise. The HP5370 firmware uses floating point to avoid exactly that issue, and all the math I've traced is good and competent. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On 28/02/14 18:42, Tom Van Baak wrote: I think one of the best chances would be to improve the phase noise of the 200MHz signal. But don't miss the fact that being able to make a LOT more measurements in the same time also improves noise statistically. I agree with this. And it makes me wonder if someone on the list is now eyeing the SR 620 as the next classic instrument in need of a time nuts upgrade? It would be very cool if in the end both the hp5370 and the SR620 can be turned into true timestamping counters, a la the Pendulum CNT-9x and the Agilent 53230. Indeed. Just having ethernet and USB on them would help a lot. The key point is that you need to hide the dead-time between the stop trigger and the arm trigger. You also need continuous time to be assuered, which typically means a runnning time counter. None of them is made to be a zero dead-time counter, where as HP-5371/5372/5373 and CNT-9x is. I think one has to think a little about how the counter HW is being extended to achieve the true ZDT properties. The typical way for getting these counters hide their dead-time have been a higher rate trigger signal than arm signal (typcially x2). The other way is to use a pair of counters and having them being armed on every other measure. Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 01/03/14 11:31, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message 5311b3eb.1000...@rubidium.dyndns.org, Magnus Danielson writes: What one possibly could do is to see if there is any round-off issues that causes any noise. The HP5370 firmware uses floating point to avoid exactly that issue, and all the math I've traced is good and competent. OK. Good. I've seen it with others. In fact, I learned about the issue when seeing data from Pendelum as they where a little confused about it. Cheers, Magnus ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Well “so far they look the same” is a pretty good answer to the question. Running emulated code, that’s the outcome that I would expect. Of course one always has to be careful when you find the expected result :) To me the next layer here is to see if the basic accuracy of the device can be improved in software. My guess is that’s not going to happen, but one should look into it. If that’s a dead end, there’s always putting a CNT-90 like frequency estimator into the code. Bob On Feb 28, 2014, at 2:16 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 7984e000-057c-4790-9d20-e4dac1f60...@rtty.us, Bob Camp writes: Is there any performance data on how the card does with a 5370A and / or a 5370B compared to the original CPU on the exact same box? Put another way - does the counter get better or worse with the new card? I realize that an A will do some things with B firmware, that=92s not the question I'm asking. I'm looking for A to A or B to B timing data. I have spent most of my time trying to answer exactly that question and I have not been able to devise any experiment that shows a difference in noiselevels with a credible statistical uncertainty. Interestingly, it is pretty evident from my experiments that the phase-noise of whatever EXT CLK source I use is the main cause of one-shot noise, so if anybody happens to have a *really* clean 10MHz and a 5370, it would be interesting to hear how low it can go. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
In message 87caf1a2-d281-4331-b019-b01b06f11...@rtty.us, Bob Camp writes: To me the next layer here is to see if the basic accuracy of the device can be improved in software. I have a hard time seeing how that would happen. I think one of the best chances would be to improve the phase noise of the 200MHz signal. But don't miss the fact that being able to make a LOT more measurements in the same time also improves noise statistically. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
If you use a flash-based embedded ARM board, how much is it worth to you that it works everyday? How much is it worth to you that you do not have to rebuild it once a year or once a month? I have several of them and I corrupted one a couple of years ago. It was not something that was on 24/7 and it was not a power outage. I turned it off myself and it did not come back. Fortunately, it had a pretty much stock distribution on it and it was easy to rebuild. I am more careful now. Yet, my Raspberry Pi is on 24/7 and it survived the many storms we have had in the last 2 months (Florida is the lightning capital of the world, as they say) It is perfectly OK to not care, but most of us are used to equipment that powers up each time you need it and that only requires to flip the power switch to off when you are done. It is bad enough to have to properly close Windows (replace with your favorite OS, they all have similar requirements) and most open apps when you are done before turning the switch off on your desktop system. The fact that it may do it 100 times in a row and not fail is not great consolation if it fails at 101. It is a documented failure mode, not pie in the sky. It is only an issue with regard to your own expectations. Do not disparage people who expect more of the hardware than you do. Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 9:29:22 PM CST, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:03 PM, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like I win the fiver. Really? You power-failed it and corrupted the file system? Johns created a great board for the 5370. However you can't just turn the 5370 off as this lazy person is used to. Really? You tried it and screwed up the file system? Plus I really have to say after a full day of time-nuttery I won't remember to shut the linux down. So thats the need good old shutdown controlled by the power off button. But as Tom says please send the thoughts to John. Regards Paul WB8TSL -- 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Didier Juges shali...@gmail.com wrote: If you use a flash-based embedded ARM board, how much is it worth to you that it works everyday? How much is it worth to you that you do not have to rebuild it once a year or once a month? I have several of them and I corrupted one a couple of years ago. It was not something that was on 24/7 and it was not a power outage. I turned it off myself and it did not come back. OK, you turned it off and it did not come back. Sounds like a different failure from what we are talking about. You did a normal shut down and it failed. Of course we are going to have some number of random failures in normal operation. S--- happens. And I agree that, if the system has a R/W filesystem and there is no power-fail processing provided, odds are good the filesystem will become corrupted during power-fail at some point in time. But has anyone determined whether or not that happens with the BBB in question? Does it have PF processing? Is there PF detection? Does the PSU hold power up long enough for PF processing to complete? Fortunately, it had a pretty much stock distribution on it and it was easy to rebuild. I am more careful now. Yet, my Raspberry Pi is on 24/7 and it survived the many storms we have had in the last 2 months (Florida is the lightning capital of the world, as they say) And the other side is that a group of negatives does not prove the problem does NOT exist, it only suggests that it does not exist, it only suggests that the probability is lower than originally thought. It is perfectly OK to not care, but most of us are used to equipment that powers up each time you need it and that only requires to flip the power switch to off when you are done. Ah, that is not the point. I agree and I *DO* care. I want my test equipment to power up and work EVERY time. I am still waiting for someone to show that this is a real problem and not just an imagined problem. It is bad enough to have to properly close Windows (replace with your favorite OS, they all have similar requirements) and most open apps when you are done before turning the switch off on your desktop system. Most of them let the processor turn off the power after completing shutdown. That does seem like a useful approach. Allow the power switch to initiate the system shutdown and then let the system remove power. Of course, this is a hardware change and in this case the replacement CPU board is supposed to be a drop-in replacement. The fact that it may do it 100 times in a row and not fail is not great consolation if it fails at 101. It is a documented failure mode, not pie in the sky. N, it is STILL pie-in-the-sky because, as far as I can remember back up this thread, no one has experienced an actual failure, only imagined that it is possible, which gets back to my original question: is this a real problem? It is only an issue with regard to your own expectations. Do not disparage people who expect more of the hardware than you do. I am not disparaging anyone. I am approaching this from an engineering standpoint. When presented with a problem from a client/customer, the first thing to do is to qualify the report. And I am not saying that it is NOT a problem, only that it MAY be an IMAGINED problem where none exists. I have no ego involved in all of this. I actually don't care if I am right or wrong. I am presenting a counter thought process in an attempt to balance the discussion. I would happily pay the $5 and then buy the beer for a good laugh after the fact. -- 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.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Gentleman, Tom Van Baak the (co)founder of this group has kindly asked you yesterday to stop this thread. Please do so. Sent From iPhone On Feb 28, 2014, at 6:20, Didier Juges shali...@gmail.com wrote: If you use a flash-based embedded ARM board, how much is it worth to you that it works everyday? How much is it worth to you that you do not have to rebuild it once a year or once a month? I have several of them and I corrupted one a couple of years ago. It was not something that was on 24/7 and it was not a power outage. I turned it off myself and it did not come back. Fortunately, it had a pretty much stock distribution on it and it was easy to rebuild. I am more careful now. Yet, my Raspberry Pi is on 24/7 and it survived the many storms we have had in the last 2 months (Florida is the lightning capital of the world, as they say) It is perfectly OK to not care, but most of us are used to equipment that powers up each time you need it and that only requires to flip the power switch to off when you are done. It is bad enough to have to properly close Windows (replace with your favorite OS, they all have similar requirements) and most open apps when you are done before turning the switch off on your desktop system. The fact that it may do it 100 times in a row and not fail is not great consolation if it fails at 101. It is a documented failure mode, not pie in the sky. It is only an issue with regard to your own expectations. Do not disparage people who expect more of the hardware than you do. Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 9:29:22 PM CST, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:03 PM, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like I win the fiver. Really? You power-failed it and corrupted the file system? Johns created a great board for the 5370. However you can't just turn the 5370 off as this lazy person is used to. Really? You tried it and screwed up the file system? Plus I really have to say after a full day of time-nuttery I won't remember to shut the linux down. So thats the need good old shutdown controlled by the power off button. But as Tom says please send the thoughts to John. Regards Paul WB8TSL -- 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
I think one of the best chances would be to improve the phase noise of the 200MHz signal. But don't miss the fact that being able to make a LOT more measurements in the same time also improves noise statistically. I agree with this. And it makes me wonder if someone on the list is now eyeing the SR 620 as the next classic instrument in need of a time nuts upgrade? It would be very cool if in the end both the hp5370 and the SR620 can be turned into true timestamping counters, a la the Pendulum CNT-9x and the Agilent 53230. /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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi I agree that improving the basic accuracy is a bit of a stretch. The first thing to look for would be temperature sensitivity that you could take out with a correction table. In another post you beat me to the 200 MHz chain and it’s phase locking. One might be able to do something interesting with a digital filter on the PLL ... Bob On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:18 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 87caf1a2-d281-4331-b019-b01b06f11...@rtty.us, Bob Camp writes: To me the next layer here is to see if the basic accuracy of the device can be improved in software. I have a hard time seeing how that would happen. I think one of the best chances would be to improve the phase noise of the 200MHz signal. But don't miss the fact that being able to make a LOT more measurements in the same time also improves noise statistically. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. The advantage of something like the BBB is that it runs Linux so you have a nice environment in which to run your code. The disadvantage of Linux is that it's complicated and you have things like file systems that can get trashed. Now, in addition of being the sysadmin for your PC(s), you have to be an admin for your lab gear. That may be more interesting that you were expecting. A friend reports that his scope caught a virus... The Linux ext4 file system is pretty robust. There are lots of PCs out there that mostly survive power failures. If I was worried about the file system getting trashed on power off, I'd work on the software long before I added a super-cap. I think my first try would be to run the file system read-only until I figured out that I needed to write a file. Then I would know something about how much data I wanted to write and the usage patterns. You can help a lot with flush() in the right places in your code. That may cost performance if you are writing a lot of data. Another approach is to make sure you can put the disk back together easily and quickly. Then it's not such a big deal if/when the disk gets trashed. That's probably a good idea anyway. Power fail isn't the only thing that can trash a disk. It shouldn't take much more than a simple script to format the disk and copy over all the bits from a backup place on a PC. Maybe it's install the standard distro package and then add your bits. (That's assuming you can take the disk out of the BBB and plug it into a PC.) -- 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 27 February 2014 08:26, Hal Murray hmur...@megapathdsl.net wrote: The advantage of something like the BBB is that it runs Linux so you have a nice environment in which to run your code. The disadvantage of Linux is that it's complicated and you have things like file systems that can get trashed. Now, in addition of being the sysadmin for your PC(s), you have to be an admin for your lab gear. That may be more interesting that you were expecting. A friend reports that his scope caught a virus... Consumer devices like routers and modems run Linux. Does anyone know how they get around this issue? I wonder if the OS is stored on a read-only device, and that is loaded into a read/write device when the device is powered on. It is great to hear about this project - even though I no longer have a 5370B. I can see CPU upgrades could bring new life to a lot of old instruments, but it clearly takes a lot of dedication to sort out the code. Something very complex like a vector network analyzer would probably be particularly challenging, Dave ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message canx10ha2qmiwc2js8xfn3jat1vxntnnbzxa8-fhq7cybf52...@mail.gmail.com , Dr. David Kirkby writes: On 27 February 2014 08:26, Hal Murray hmur...@megapathdsl.net wrote: Consumer devices like routers and modems run Linux. Does anyone know how they get around this issue? They generally don't mount their filesystems read/write, but only read/only. I've done similar things with FreeBSD in many systems (see: nanobsd) but I don't have time or clue to figure out how to do that with Linux. I belive that busybox is somewhat akin to nanobsd, but don't know how to get that onto the BBB hardware. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On 2/27/2014 6:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: They generally don't mount their filesystems read/write, but only read/only. I've done similar things with FreeBSD in many systems (see: nanobsd) but I don't have time or clue to figure out how to do that with Linux. The way TiVo does this is to have a RO / partition, and a RW /var partition. Normally, any writing is done in /var. If it gets corrupted, it gets rebuilt at boot time. But, they don't have to deal with user account and changing config files (those are stored outside the Linux partitions). But, the concept could be easily extended so perhaps / is only RW during short times when changes which need to be non-volatile are made. (soft link /tmp to somewhere in /var, too) I belive that busybox is somewhat akin to nanobsd, but don't know how to get that onto the BBB hardware. bb is just an all-in-one binary, which provides many standard *nix commands, often in a form just different enough from the gnu coreutils and POSIX specs to screw things up when you're not watching. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Not that I can code anything. I do like several comments I see considering real life always messes everything up. The ability to download new code easily. To complement that the ability to upload the current system with IPs and such. Most routers support this approach. The other comment make the file system RO if possible. Batteries and such are always a mess to get right. Regards Paul. WB8TSL On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dkwrote: In message canx10ha2qmiwc2js8xfn3jat1vxntnnbzxa8-fhq7cybf52...@mail.gmail.com , Dr. David Kirkby writes: On 27 February 2014 08:26, Hal Murray hmur...@megapathdsl.net wrote: Consumer devices like routers and modems run Linux. Does anyone know how they get around this issue? They generally don't mount their filesystems read/write, but only read/only. I've done similar things with FreeBSD in many systems (see: nanobsd) but I don't have time or clue to figure out how to do that with Linux. I belive that busybox is somewhat akin to nanobsd, but don't know how to get that onto the BBB hardware. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
The BBB has 2GB of flash on board (non removable) and has a micro SD socket. Would not be too hard to keep a backup copy of the OS and apps on the SD card so that it would be easy to boot from SD and reload the built-in flash if the BBB fails to boot from the built-in image. That would not be a replacement for a workable, safe boot process that can be interrupted without trashing the file system. Just a few days ago, an overnight storm caused power to flicker maybe 5 times in less than a minute. My Raspberry Pi managed to survive it, but I am not sure that will always be the case. I think a super cap with proper shutdown routine would probably the easiest to implement. Alternately, running the flash read only, copy OS, apps and everything else to a RAM disk and run from the RAM disk would probably be the safest. Not sure you can do that with 512MB of RAM without some serious pruning of the Linux kernel. Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 2:26:13 AM CST, Hal Murray hmur...@megapathdsl.net wrote: I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. The advantage of something like the BBB is that it runs Linux so you have a nice environment in which to run your code. The disadvantage of Linux is that it's complicated and you have things like file systems that can get trashed. Now, in addition of being the sysadmin for your PC(s), you have to be an admin for your lab gear. That may be more interesting that you were expecting. A friend reports that his scope caught a virus... The Linux ext4 file system is pretty robust. There are lots of PCs out there that mostly survive power failures. If I was worried about the file system getting trashed on power off, I'd work on the software long before I added a super-cap. I think my first try would be to run the file system read-only until I figured out that I needed to write a file. Then I would know something about how much data I wanted to write and the usage patterns. You can help a lot with flush() in the right places in your code. That may cost performance if you are writing a lot of data. Another approach is to make sure you can put the disk back together easily and quickly. Then it's not such a big deal if/when the disk gets trashed. That's probably a good idea anyway. Power fail isn't the only thing that can trash a disk. It shouldn't take much more than a simple script to format the disk and copy over all the bits from a backup place on a PC. Maybe it's install the standard distro package and then add your bits. (That's assuming you can take the disk out of the BBB and plug it into a PC.) -- 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
The only time there is any exposure is during a write operation. When the processor board is used to run the 5370, how often is data written and what is the exposure interval? I would be willing to bet that Linux already has a power-fail NMI input. I would bet that you can find out what the worst-case PF NMI latency is and then ensure that the PS output stays up at least that long without having to worry about a battery or super cap. (I bet PF latency is under 1ms.) In that case, all you need to do is assert the PF interrupt line. Hmm, check to see if it is already there and based on nothing more than sagging Vcc/Vdd. I bet it is and therefore this whole discussion may be moot. But the idea of making the boot partition RO and the /var partition R/W makes a whole lot of sense to me. -- 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.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On 2/27/14 6:40 AM, Didier Juges wrote: The BBB has 2GB of flash on board (non removable) and has a micro SD socket. Would not be too hard to keep a backup copy of the OS and apps on the SD card so that it would be easy to boot from SD and reload the built-in flash if the BBB fails to boot from the built-in image. Alternately, running the flash read only, copy OS, apps and everything else to a RAM disk and run from the RAM disk would probably be the safest. Not sure you can do that with 512MB of RAM without some serious pruning of the Linux kernel. Back in 2004, I was running a stripped down linux off a small compact flash (256MB or 512MB, I think) on a VIA Eden 700 MHz motherboard with very limited RAM. It included busybox to provide the usual command line utilities. As I dimly recall, it booted from a compressed filesystem (on CF) to ramdisk only. I also had a version of Debian that net-booted, and also ran entirely in ram. I could probably dig it up if someone's interested. We run RTEMS (www.rtems.org) at work, which provides a Posix compliant interface, but is designed for embedded systems, and has a bunch of targets (ours is SPARC, but there's x86 versions, for sure). You can definitely fit that in well under 128 MB. We've found that most everything that compiles and runs under Linux will compile/run under RTEMS, unless you're using something peculiar to Linux, or you need dynamic loading/linking (RTEMS is statically linked). That is, we have very few #ifdef LINUX kind of things in our code. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. D. On 27 Feb 2014 06:52, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: That fix presumes that the power line never quits at inappropriate times. This winter has provided me with ample reminders that power can go out anytime. I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. -Chuck Harris John Seamons wrote: On Feb 25, 2014, at 12:59 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: I may have a solution for the power-off problem that doesn't involve batteries or supercaps. It has the added advantage of providing instant-on. From the latest documentation: One solution to the annoyance of having to halt the BBB before the instrument is powered off is simply to keep the BBB running by providing it a secondary source of power via the USB-mini port. The BBB already understands how to select between two sources of power: the USB-mini and +5V barrel connectors (the latter of which is actually being delivered from the 5370 via the board expansion connectors). The app detects when the instrument has powered down and resumes running when power is restored. USB power could come from an external USB hub or charger. You may have to obtain a longer USB cable than the one supplied. Be certain to only use the USB-mini connector that is adjacent to the Ethernet RJ45 connector. Do not use the USB-A connector on the other end of the board as that port will not accept input power. Some of you might even figure out how to derive +5V for the USB-mini cable from the 5370 oven power supply card that is always powered if the instrument is off but the line cord is plugged in. But beware of the potential problem of conducting noise from the BBB to the reference oscillator over such a connection. Some experimentation and measurement is necessary. The planned USB/Ethernet connector card that replaces the current HPIB one at the back-panel could host a voltage regulator. Aligator clip connections to the '+25V UNREG' and GND test points on the oven power supply would alleviate the need for any soldering. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
You can fit linux with a comfortable amount of stuff in 20 MB, but you want more than that for more advanced programs. You should not use the built in ssd for writing. It has limited writes and cannot be replaced. Use a card. You can tailor linux so that it has minimal services but the question of how to make it shut down in a predictable amount of time is a complex issue and you are best off finding an existing project that focuses on this. So rather than limit yourself to an esoteric set of requirements I recommend using a battery that'll run the BBB for 15 minutes and will charge in an hour while it's on. My day job is among others as a linux admin. D. On 27 Feb 2014 15:47, Didier Juges shali...@gmail.com wrote: The BBB has 2GB of flash on board (non removable) and has a micro SD socket. Would not be too hard to keep a backup copy of the OS and apps on the SD card so that it would be easy to boot from SD and reload the built-in flash if the BBB fails to boot from the built-in image. That would not be a replacement for a workable, safe boot process that can be interrupted without trashing the file system. Just a few days ago, an overnight storm caused power to flicker maybe 5 times in less than a minute. My Raspberry Pi managed to survive it, but I am not sure that will always be the case. I think a super cap with proper shutdown routine would probably the easiest to implement. Alternately, running the flash read only, copy OS, apps and everything else to a RAM disk and run from the RAM disk would probably be the safest. Not sure you can do that with 512MB of RAM without some serious pruning of the Linux kernel. Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 2:26:13 AM CST, Hal Murray hmur...@megapathdsl.net wrote: I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. The advantage of something like the BBB is that it runs Linux so you have a nice environment in which to run your code. The disadvantage of Linux is that it's complicated and you have things like file systems that can get trashed. Now, in addition of being the sysadmin for your PC(s), you have to be an admin for your lab gear. That may be more interesting that you were expecting. A friend reports that his scope caught a virus... The Linux ext4 file system is pretty robust. There are lots of PCs out there that mostly survive power failures. If I was worried about the file system getting trashed on power off, I'd work on the software long before I added a super-cap. I think my first try would be to run the file system read-only until I figured out that I needed to write a file. Then I would know something about how much data I wanted to write and the usage patterns. You can help a lot with flush() in the right places in your code. That may cost performance if you are writing a lot of data. Another approach is to make sure you can put the disk back together easily and quickly. Then it's not such a big deal if/when the disk gets trashed. That's probably a good idea anyway. Power fail isn't the only thing that can trash a disk. It shouldn't take much more than a simple script to format the disk and copy over all the bits from a backup place on a PC. Maybe it's install the standard distro package and then add your bits. (That's assuming you can take the disk out of the BBB and plug it into a PC.) -- 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message CA+9GZUhJLqQ7K-cNXsSzPMgSOH6Oyd774SM_e0=ykljgyd4...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. (Or port it all to FreeBSD, which I'm considering, because there I know how to do it :-) -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 12:03 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dkwrote: Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. This is a solved problem. I don't understand why this discussion is dragging on. E.g liveCD, ramdisk, Linux routers, thin (diskless) clients. The relevant variables are the distribution and if you want to use a network disk. I will say the underlying concerns are valid. I have two Raspberry Pis and three Beable Bone Blacks. I've had four SD cards fail among the group and they're not even on most of the time. CompactFlash is much better. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
There is a spin of FreeBSD called NanoBSD, little light on the documentation but the name pretty much says what it is about. Either way it looks like the BBB is opening up quite a few minds. Finally a good combination of power, i/o etc. and not to mention the two PRU's .. just read up on them last night, very interesting. -pete On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Do you have experience with FreeBSD on ARM processors? The simple solution, which may not be possible, is to make all software on the flash disk RO, and put any part of the file system that needs to be written onto a RAM disk... probably should be the /var directory. The only time the flash disk must be written is when some configuration parameter must be changed, or the linux/program image must be changed. The routines that make those changes could be fashioned so that they flush the caches immediately after they are finished. From observation, the BBB keeps operating for several seconds after power is removed. If a power failure interrupt is created that will notify linux instantly on power failure, it would be possible to forbid configuration changes that take longer than a couple of seconds. -Chuck Harris Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message CA+9GZUhJLqQ7K-cNXsSzPMgSOH6Oyd774SM_e0=ykLJg yd4...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. (Or port it all to FreeBSD, which I'm considering, because there I know how to do it :-) ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Backup batteries don't make me queasy. The easiest, cheapest backup battery would be a small 6V 3AH sealed lead acid battery. It is trivial to make a good float charger using a 3 terminal regulator and a diode, and they do not leak, vent, or anything problematic. The little 6V 3AH packs are used in emergency lighting, so they are readily available. Float them at 6.9V, and they will last at least 5 years. I suggested a super cap because they are cheap, and tend to last a very long time without leaking. 100F will keep a BBB up for quite a while if it isn't driving the network, or usb devices. Regardless of the power safe mechanism, it would be best that the BBB get an interrupt at the moment power is deemed bad, and starts an orderly shutdown. To guard against power bouncing, it should be prevented from restarting until several seconds after shutdown is completed... some sort of timer should be part of the power safe mechanism. -Chuck Harris cheater00 . wrote: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. D. On 27 Feb 2014 06:52, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: That fix presumes that the power line never quits at inappropriate times. This winter has provided me with ample reminders that power can go out anytime. I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. -Chuck Harris ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
At 11:03 AM 2/27/2014, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. Exactly. We use the PC-Engines ALIX x86 single board computer stuff at work, and even I didn't have too much trouble getting a pretty much stock Debian installation 'adjusted' to run with the CF card mounted as read-only. I've yet to see a problem with power cycles. (But I've only done the power cycle bench test a few hundred loops.) -- newell N5TNL ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Do you have experience with FreeBSD on ARM processors? The simple solution, which may not be possible, is to make all software on the flash disk RO, and put any part of the file system that needs to be written onto a RAM disk... probably should be the /var directory. The only time the flash disk must be written is when some configuration parameter must be changed, or the linux/program image must be changed. The routines that make those changes could be fashioned so that they flush the caches immediately after they are finished. From observation, the BBB keeps operating for several seconds after power is removed. If a power failure interrupt is created that will notify linux instantly on power failure, it would be possible to forbid configuration changes that take longer than a couple of seconds. -Chuck Harris Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: In message CA+9GZUhJLqQ7K-cNXsSzPMgSOH6Oyd774SM_e0=ykljgyd4...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. (Or port it all to FreeBSD, which I'm considering, because there I know how to do it :-) ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:03 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message CA+9GZUhJLqQ7K-cNXsSzPMgSOH6Oyd774SM_e0=ykljgyd4...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. (Or port it all to FreeBSD, which I'm considering, because there I know how to do it :-) Oh, of course it's not about keeping the computer on at all times, it's about having a contingency for the 0.1% case when your computer does not shut down in the assumed time. Unless you develop your system and everything running in it as hard real time, you cannot escape the fact that sometimes the thing will take longer than expected to shut down. And at some point that will cause data loss. A suitable battery costs $5. Is your time worth so much less than $5 that you actually consider the task of building your own Linux distribution for this case, or even just finding one that will work relatively problem-free? D. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Scott Newell newell+timen...@n5tnl.com wrote: At 11:03 AM 2/27/2014, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: Seriously: Keeping the computer alive and eating power is silly. We just need to find out how to get the Linux configured correctly. Exactly. We use the PC-Engines ALIX x86 single board computer stuff at work, and even I didn't have too much trouble getting a pretty much stock Debian installation 'adjusted' to run with the CF card mounted as read-only. I've yet to see a problem with power cycles. (But I've only done the power cycle bench test a few hundred loops.) -- newell N5TNL My assumption is that, unlike an embedded computer which is plug-and-forget, this thing will get modified, developed on, played around with, etc, all of which includes userland software (= possibly long shutdown times) and disk access (= possibly long shutdown times). It's trivial to run a read-only system but that's limiting and takes out the fun of tinkering with the BBB to make your own applications and other stuff. You might say that we could run the stock system RO and add any user-supplied stuff to RW media and just say that it isn't going to survive a power-down. But that's not really a comfortable situation. D. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 27 Feb 2014 16:55, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: If having a battery in the device makes some of you queasy, you could always put it outside, on the back. But I seriously believe there are ways to make battery backup which will not leak. Two batteries, each with a diode and bought to a common point seems logical to me. It only needs one present so either one can be changed with no loss of power. Guarding against battery faulty batteries that leak prematurely probably needs a physical barrier, but I can't believe it is rocket science ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
It is interesting to watch this thread. The most interesting thing is the fact that no one has asked or answered the basic question: is there a problem? There are a lot of solutions for what may be a complete non-issue. Given that Linux and BSD are reliable and stable on standard PC platforms connected to mains power without a UPS, that suggests to me that there is likely no issue. Sure, back in the bad ol' days you had to sync;sync;sync the filesystem prior to shutdown and then, if there had been a power fail, fsck it on power up. But those days have been gone for a LONG time. The modern filesystems reduce the exposure to the possibility of file system corruption to a tiny probability, and then the system further reduces that by providing a power-fail detection system that allows the critical pending writes to be flushed prior to final power-fail, thus leaving the FS in a completely deterministic state. I suppose that on the night of a full moon when the lightning flashes and the dog barks, conditions might be right to corrupt the file system, but then, that could happen when the battery goes dead or catches fire too. ;-) It seems to me that the bard put it pretty well, ... much ado about nothing. -- 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.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
In message CAE3hgTcOU5cT3y-T9gYGJz4xeoob9dU8UEM4YgPuwvDWX6Q=6...@mail.gmail.com , Brian Lloyd writes: The only time there is any exposure is during a write operation. When the processor board is used to run the 5370, how often is data written and what is the exposure interval? It runs a full Linux, so there are logfiles, daemons and all sorts of stuff which writes. It needs to be pared down to a sensible embedded configuration. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
In message 530f740a.7030...@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes: Do you have experience with FreeBSD on ARM processors? A little bit, I just started playing with it again recently. The simple solution, which may not be possible, is to make all software on the flash disk RO, and put any part of the file system that needs to be written onto a RAM disk... probably should be the /var directory. That's exactly what NanoBSD does, with a few more wrinkles to boot: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/nanobsd/ -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
In message ca+9gzujtzon9+uxg1r1brxx8zyv4wnjq22qpsbityako20w...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: Oh, of course it's not about keeping the computer on at all times, it's about having a contingency for the 0.1% case when your computer does not shut down in the assumed time. You're missing the point: If all the permanent filesystems are mounted read-only, and only ram-disks are mounted read-write, you don't even need to shut down, you can just yank the power. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
There you have the problem in the above sentence from Poul-Henning. It needs to be yank the power proof. Because that is the way the 5370 shuts down. That said the board and software thats been created by one person is simply amazing and well done. We are discussing a fine adjustment. Batteries are an incredible mess. I suspect we need a fast detect interrupt from the incoming power supply. My experience with other Linuxes is that they waste way to much time flushing stuff. So the comment about making the file system RO after you have added the IP makes great sense. The ability to upload and then re-download also is good I can do that on my routers and believe actually this board can easily do the same. Its just at the end of the day when I am tired I will hit the off switch. Ooops lucky me I get to reload everything. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 2:21 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dkwrote: In message ca+9gzujtzon9+uxg1r1brxx8zyv4wnjq22qpsbityako20w...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: Oh, of course it's not about keeping the computer on at all times, it's about having a contingency for the 0.1% case when your computer does not shut down in the assumed time. You're missing the point: If all the permanent filesystems are mounted read-only, and only ram-disks are mounted read-write, you don't even need to shut down, you can just yank the power. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Brian, it's less about caching pending writes to file handles that are waiting inside the system. That's most likely to work well within a short period of time. The issue is if you're using the system to its full extent. Among others you'd like to write applications for the BBB that enhance the 5370's capabilities. You don't want to bother with hard real time, compilation, memory layout, etc, all of them problems each of which will make your development time 10x longer and your fun time 20x shorter. So instead you use something like Python or Java. Then, you also don't really bother to ensure that your program can be interrupted at any time, since that's another level of complexity. Coroutines? Continuation passing style? Reactive programming? Why bother? Then you make a few other decisions that make your program easier to make and more difficult to shut down immediately in a clean manner. So let's say it's running and it is collecting data which is crucial to you. Maybe you again didn't bother to make sure that if the program crashes it will not corrupt its data. So now your BBB gets the power loss interrupt, sends kill -15 to all processes and most of them exit. Your program doesn't so likely Linux tries to send signals 2, then 1, then 9 at which point your program will certainly crash (sig 9 means crash now). So your program will likely eat all the data. Note that all of the shortcuts I mentioned above are fairly reasonable defaults that save days of work per project for no improvement in reliability, since, after all, a suitable battery only costs $5. Cheers, D. On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 7:47 PM, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: It is interesting to watch this thread. The most interesting thing is the fact that no one has asked or answered the basic question: is there a problem? There are a lot of solutions for what may be a complete non-issue. Given that Linux and BSD are reliable and stable on standard PC platforms connected to mains power without a UPS, that suggests to me that there is likely no issue. Sure, back in the bad ol' days you had to sync;sync;sync the filesystem prior to shutdown and then, if there had been a power fail, fsck it on power up. But those days have been gone for a LONG time. The modern filesystems reduce the exposure to the possibility of file system corruption to a tiny probability, and then the system further reduces that by providing a power-fail detection system that allows the critical pending writes to be flushed prior to final power-fail, thus leaving the FS in a completely deterministic state. I suppose that on the night of a full moon when the lightning flashes and the dog barks, conditions might be right to corrupt the file system, but then, that could happen when the battery goes dead or catches fire too. ;-) It seems to me that the bard put it pretty well, ... much ado about nothing. -- 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
Most routers use a similar model and can save important settings but still recover from a crash with no problem. There are several router distros that are good examples on how to do it. I would suggest looking at Voyage Linux http://linux.voyage.hk/ for an example. They have a specific versing for the BeagleBone Black. You can run user space apps on it just fine and it can save changes as necessary. I'm sure there are other examples as well. I'm just looking to making the box more reliable and stable. Running apps on it seems more complex than I'm up for. However a web page to control and read back seems like a nice trick. Demian On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 2:21 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dkwrote: In message ca+9gzujtzon9+uxg1r1brxx8zyv4wnjq22qpsbityako20w...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: Oh, of course it's not about keeping the computer on at all times, it's about having a contingency for the 0.1% case when your computer does not shut down in the assumed time. You're missing the point: If all the permanent filesystems are mounted read-only, and only ram-disks are mounted read-write, you don't even need to shut down, you can just yank the power. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
In message CA+9GZUgrLw05f=pvh5tji+vlkfstwatibcpe1t3xfgwq2+s...@mail.gmail.com , cheater00 . writes: Note that all of the shortcuts I mentioned above are fairly reasonable defaults that save days of work per project for no improvement in reliability, since, after all, a suitable battery only costs $5. Lets just say that I seem to use fairly, resonable, save, improvement and suitable in a different way than you do. The easiest way to do the kind of stuff you're talking about, is to NFS mount a filesystem on the BBB. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On 27 February 2014 17:31, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Backup batteries don't make me queasy. The easiest, cheapest backup battery would be a small 6V 3AH sealed lead acid battery. It is trivial to make a good float charger using a 3 terminal regulator and a diode, and they do not leak, vent, or anything problematic. The little 6V 3AH packs are used in emergency lighting, so they are readily available. Float them at 6.9V, and they will last at least 5 years. I thought there was an issue with even sealed lead acids of them emitting small amounts of sulfuric acid, which is not great in a bit of test equipment. Dave ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
I have worked on lots of equipment that was sealed with a SLA inside, and I have never seen any sign of corrosion. Only times I have seen a problem is in the case of UPS's that were left discharged in unheated warehouses... the electrolyte froze and the battery cases bulged greatly, but still no leakage. -Chuck Harris Dr. David Kirkby wrote: On 27 February 2014 17:31, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Backup batteries don't make me queasy. The easiest, cheapest backup battery would be a small 6V 3AH sealed lead acid battery. It is trivial to make a good float charger using a 3 terminal regulator and a diode, and they do not leak, vent, or anything problematic. The little 6V 3AH packs are used in emergency lighting, so they are readily available. Float them at 6.9V, and they will last at least 5 years. I thought there was an issue with even sealed lead acids of them emitting small amounts of sulfuric acid, which is not great in a bit of test equipment. Dave ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Totally agree with Chucks comment I have opened many system that have been in service at least 5 years virtually no evidence of corrosion. I have however opened system that do not manage the batteries correctly and they are a mess. But we really are drifting away from the main thread. Just want to turn the 5370 off at the end of the day and back on the next. No think-um. Regards Paul On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: I have worked on lots of equipment that was sealed with a SLA inside, and I have never seen any sign of corrosion. Only times I have seen a problem is in the case of UPS's that were left discharged in unheated warehouses... the electrolyte froze and the battery cases bulged greatly, but still no leakage. -Chuck Harris Dr. David Kirkby wrote: On 27 February 2014 17:31, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: Backup batteries don't make me queasy. The easiest, cheapest backup battery would be a small 6V 3AH sealed lead acid battery. It is trivial to make a good float charger using a 3 terminal regulator and a diode, and they do not leak, vent, or anything problematic. The little 6V 3AH packs are used in emergency lighting, so they are readily available. Float them at 6.9V, and they will last at least 5 years. I thought there was an issue with even sealed lead acids of them emitting small amounts of sulfuric acid, which is not great in a bit of test equipment. Dave ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
But we really are drifting away from the main thread. Yes, indeed. It's time to wrap up the operating system and file system tangents and get back to time frequency. Those of you with positive suggestions for improvements of the 5370 processor mod kit can email them to John Seamons directly. He has done an incredible job and the direction this thread has taken is unfortunate. /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] 5370 processor boards available
Now that you mention it, I have another small embedded system with 64MB of RAM that runs Linux 3.4 just fine off a flash drive, so running a RAM disk in 512MB should be feasible. Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 9:12:45 AM CST, Jim Lux jim...@earthlink.net wrote: On 2/27/14 6:40 AM, Didier Juges wrote: The BBB has 2GB of flash on board (non removable) and has a micro SD socket. Would not be too hard to keep a backup copy of the OS and apps on the SD card so that it would be easy to boot from SD and reload the built-in flash if the BBB fails to boot from the built-in image. Alternately, running the flash read only, copy OS, apps and everything else to a RAM disk and run from the RAM disk would probably be the safest. Not sure you can do that with 512MB of RAM without some serious pruning of the Linux kernel. Back in 2004, I was running a stripped down linux off a small compact flash (256MB or 512MB, I think) on a VIA Eden 700 MHz motherboard with very limited RAM. It included busybox to provide the usual command line utilities. As I dimly recall, it booted from a compressed filesystem (on CF) to ramdisk only. I also had a version of Debian that net-booted, and also ran entirely in ram. I could probably dig it up if someone's interested. We run RTEMS (www.rtems.org) at work, which provides a Posix compliant interface, but is designed for embedded systems, and has a bunch of targets (ours is SPARC, but there's x86 versions, for sure). You can definitely fit that in well under 128 MB. We've found that most everything that compiles and runs under Linux will compile/run under RTEMS, unless you're using something peculiar to Linux, or you need dynamic loading/linking (RTEMS is statically linked). That is, we have very few #ifdef LINUX kind of things in our code. ___ 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
The only time there is any exposure is during a write operation That is not true. By default, Linux updates the last access time for each file it reads. The last access time is stored with the file, so each file read actually causes the file to be written to as well, opening the door to all sort of mayhem is power is lost during boot. Aside the performance penalty, you can trash your drive while you were just reading it. One easy optimization for embedded Linux is to turn that off. Google something like turn off last access time Didier KO4BB On February 27, 2014 9:06:31 AM CST, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: The only time there is any exposure is during a write operation. When the processor board is used to run the 5370, how often is data written and what is the exposure interval? I would be willing to bet that Linux already has a power-fail NMI input. I would bet that you can find out what the worst-case PF NMI latency is and then ensure that the PS output stays up at least that long without having to worry about a battery or super cap. (I bet PF latency is under 1ms.) In that case, all you need to do is assert the PF interrupt line. Hmm, check to see if it is already there and based on nothing more than sagging Vcc/Vdd. I bet it is and therefore this whole discussion may be moot. But the idea of making the boot partition RO and the /var partition R/W makes a whole lot of sense to me. -- 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. -- Sent from my Motorola Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker while I do other things. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
And after all that, *STILL* no one has been able to answer the question, Is there a problem that must be solved? Oh, lots of supposition, rules of thumb, boatloads of experience, etc., but still no determination that something really needs to be solved. One of the interesting things that came from building the internet protocol suite was a whole bunch of, well, let's just try it and see, that resulted in a whole LOT of, Oh, wow, it turns out it's just not a problem because it just doesn't happen. I would be willing to lay a fiver that this is one of those situations. -- 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.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Looks like I win the fiver. Johns created a great board for the 5370. However you can't just turn the 5370 off as this lazy person is used to. Plus I really have to say after a full day of time-nuttery I won't remember to shut the linux down. So thats the need good old shutdown controlled by the power off button. But as Tom says please send the thoughts to John. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: And after all that, *STILL* no one has been able to answer the question, Is there a problem that must be solved? Oh, lots of supposition, rules of thumb, boatloads of experience, etc., but still no determination that something really needs to be solved. One of the interesting things that came from building the internet protocol suite was a whole bunch of, well, let's just try it and see, that resulted in a whole LOT of, Oh, wow, it turns out it's just not a problem because it just doesn't happen. I would be willing to lay a fiver that this is one of those situations. -- 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi I realize this is a bit off the main topic of … but here goes: Is there any performance data on how the card does with a 5370A and / or a 5370B compared to the original CPU on the exact same box? Put another way - does the counter get better or worse with the new card? I realize that an A will do some things with B firmware, that’s not the question I’m asking. I’m looking for A to A or B to B timing data. Bob On Feb 27, 2014, at 10:03 PM, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like I win the fiver. Johns created a great board for the 5370. However you can't just turn the 5370 off as this lazy person is used to. Plus I really have to say after a full day of time-nuttery I won't remember to shut the linux down. So thats the need good old shutdown controlled by the power off button. But as Tom says please send the thoughts to John. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Brian Lloyd br...@lloyd.com wrote: And after all that, *STILL* no one has been able to answer the question, Is there a problem that must be solved? Oh, lots of supposition, rules of thumb, boatloads of experience, etc., but still no determination that something really needs to be solved. One of the interesting things that came from building the internet protocol suite was a whole bunch of, well, let's just try it and see, that resulted in a whole LOT of, Oh, wow, it turns out it's just not a problem because it just doesn't happen. I would be willing to lay a fiver that this is one of those situations. -- 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Feb 28, 2014, at 4:34 PM, Bob Camp li...@rtty.us wrote: Is there any performance data on how the card does with a 5370A and / or a 5370B compared to the original CPU on the exact same box? Put another way - does the counter get better or worse with the new card? I realize that an A will do some things with B firmware, that’s not the question I’m asking. I’m looking for A to A or B to B timing data. Yes. I made some measurements with the previous microcontroller-based board (48 MHz sam7x) versus the stock CPU card. I have not yet had a chance to repeat that exercise with the current board. Look at the 23-Jul-2011 entry on www.jks.com/5370/5370.html Very much dependent on what the measurement is, but a range of 5-72% faster. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:03 PM, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: Looks like I win the fiver. Really? You power-failed it and corrupted the file system? Johns created a great board for the 5370. However you can't just turn the 5370 off as this lazy person is used to. Really? You tried it and screwed up the file system? Plus I really have to say after a full day of time-nuttery I won't remember to shut the linux down. So thats the need good old shutdown controlled by the power off button. But as Tom says please send the thoughts to John. Regards Paul WB8TSL -- 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.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Le 28 févr. 2014 à 02:55, Brian Lloyd a écrit : And after all that, *STILL* no one has been able to answer the question, Is there a problem that must be solved? Oh, lots of supposition, rules of thumb, boatloads of experience, etc., but still no determination that something really needs to be solved. It depends on what level of security is required. I don't have one of these boxes, but it is legitimate to identify possible weak points. Volatile file systems are one of those. The original box had no issues on that front. Embedded systems such as linux with flash memory do. I have just had a Soekris FreeBSD NTP server go feet up due to file system corruption caused by a power failure. It is no great deal to create a new system, but I hadn't made a drop duplicate flash card so it will take some time. So one NTP server is down for a day. If a proud owner of one of these great boards doesn't care about that sort of issue, then OK, else one of the suggestions imposes. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message 7984e000-057c-4790-9d20-e4dac1f60...@rtty.us, Bob Camp writes: Is there any performance data on how the card does with a 5370A and / or a 5370B compared to the original CPU on the exact same box? Put another way - does the counter get better or worse with the new card? I realize that an A will do some things with B firmware, that=92s not the question I'm asking. I'm looking for A to A or B to B timing data. I have spent most of my time trying to answer exactly that question and I have not been able to devise any experiment that shows a difference in noiselevels with a credible statistical uncertainty. Interestingly, it is pretty evident from my experiments that the phase-noise of whatever EXT CLK source I use is the main cause of one-shot noise, so if anybody happens to have a *really* clean 10MHz and a 5370, it would be interesting to hear how low it can go. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
On Feb 25, 2014, at 12:59 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: I may have a solution for the power-off problem that doesn't involve batteries or supercaps. It has the added advantage of providing instant-on. From the latest documentation: One solution to the annoyance of having to halt the BBB before the instrument is powered off is simply to keep the BBB running by providing it a secondary source of power via the USB-mini port. The BBB already understands how to select between two sources of power: the USB-mini and +5V barrel connectors (the latter of which is actually being delivered from the 5370 via the board expansion connectors). The app detects when the instrument has powered down and resumes running when power is restored. USB power could come from an external USB hub or charger. You may have to obtain a longer USB cable than the one supplied. Be certain to only use the USB-mini connector that is adjacent to the Ethernet RJ45 connector. Do not use the USB-A connector on the other end of the board as that port will not accept input power. Some of you might even figure out how to derive +5V for the USB-mini cable from the 5370 oven power supply card that is always powered if the instrument is off but the line cord is plugged in. But beware of the potential problem of conducting noise from the BBB to the reference oscillator over such a connection. Some experimentation and measurement is necessary. The planned USB/Ethernet connector card that replaces the current HPIB one at the back-panel could host a voltage regulator. Aligator clip connections to the '+25V UNREG' and GND test points on the oven power supply would alleviate the need for any soldering. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
That fix presumes that the power line never quits at inappropriate times. This winter has provided me with ample reminders that power can go out anytime. I think a better solution would be to find a very large super cap and power the BBB from that while giving it a power fail interrupt to quickly sync the file system. -Chuck Harris John Seamons wrote: On Feb 25, 2014, at 12:59 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: I may have a solution for the power-off problem that doesn't involve batteries or supercaps. It has the added advantage of providing instant-on. From the latest documentation: One solution to the annoyance of having to halt the BBB before the instrument is powered off is simply to keep the BBB running by providing it a secondary source of power via the USB-mini port. The BBB already understands how to select between two sources of power: the USB-mini and +5V barrel connectors (the latter of which is actually being delivered from the 5370 via the board expansion connectors). The app detects when the instrument has powered down and resumes running when power is restored. USB power could come from an external USB hub or charger. You may have to obtain a longer USB cable than the one supplied. Be certain to only use the USB-mini connector that is adjacent to the Ethernet RJ45 connector. Do not use the USB-A connector on the other end of the board as that port will not accept input power. Some of you might even figure out how to derive +5V for the USB-mini cable from the 5370 oven power supply card that is always powered if the instrument is off but the line cord is plugged in. But beware of the potential problem of conducting noise from the BBB to the reference oscillator over such a connection. Some experimentation and measurement is necessary. The planned USB/Ethernet connector card that replaces the current HPIB one at the back-panel could host a voltage regulator. Aligator clip connections to the '+25V UNREG' and GND test points on the oven power supply would alleviate the need for any soldering. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Thats exciting to hear Thanks On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 6:59 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: I may have a solution for the power-off problem that doesn't involve batteries or supercaps. It has the added advantage of providing instant-on. I need to run some tests.. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Kudos! I applaud your effort, wish I had a 5370. Regards, David Partridge -Original Message- From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of John Seamons Sent: 24 February 2014 03:57 To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi Very cool. Glad I kept that stack of 5370’s…. Bob On Feb 23, 2014, at 10:56 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Yes indeed I received my board quite quickly. And now it sits in its rapping. Curses that evil work stuff. Physically it looks excellent Regards Paul. WB8TSL On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 7:35 AM, Bob Camp li...@rtty.us wrote: Hi Very cool. Glad I kept that stack of 5370's Bob On Feb 23, 2014, at 10:56 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
An very impressive achievement. I particularly like the elegant use of the PRU to overcome the non-real time nature of the Angstrom distribution. Congratulations John! Didier KO4BB On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 9:56 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
As an early adopter/beta tester, I highly recommend this board! As yet, the board is only giving a glimpse of its potential, and yet it is completely replacing the original 6800 processor board. I am using a 5370A, with emulated 5370B firmware, and my A appears to now function as B in all important respects. It runs quite a bit faster than it originally did... and the Beagle Bone Black that has taken over the 6800's duties, isn't even breaking a sweat. At this point in time, the BBB single board computer is doing a software emulation of the original 6800 microprocessor, and is running a copy of the original firmware of either a 5370A, or B, model counter. The BBB is configured to step between the emulated code and the 5370's front panel, so you can add functions to the front panel at will. Currently, the front panel allows you to set things like RESET, halt, IP addresses, masks, etc... In the future, I can foresee replacing the 6800 firmware with custom C language routines and making the 5370 really sing! Your limit is pretty much your imagination. Oh, did I mention? It is on the ethernet with a full linux IP stack and firewall! Plug it into your router, and you can load, read, fiddle, and do just about anything far away from the actual 5370. I routinely send upgrades to my 5370 from clear across the building! -Chuck Harris (a very satisfied customer) John Seamons wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Just a side note on running ethernet in your 'lab'. If your doing any low noise work you may want to pay a bit extra and get the shielded cables and make sure the RJ45 like sockets are of the shielded type. Example http://www.pchcables.com/cashstpnecaw.html (just a local supplier nothing else) -pete On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 6:28 AM, Chuck Harris cfhar...@erols.com wrote: As an early adopter/beta tester, I highly recommend this board! As yet, the board is only giving a glimpse of its potential, and yet it is completely replacing the original 6800 processor board. I am using a 5370A, with emulated 5370B firmware, and my A appears to now function as B in all important respects. It runs quite a bit faster than it originally did... and the Beagle Bone Black that has taken over the 6800's duties, isn't even breaking a sweat. At this point in time, the BBB single board computer is doing a software emulation of the original 6800 microprocessor, and is running a copy of the original firmware of either a 5370A, or B, model counter. The BBB is configured to step between the emulated code and the 5370's front panel, so you can add functions to the front panel at will. Currently, the front panel allows you to set things like RESET, halt, IP addresses, masks, etc... In the future, I can foresee replacing the 6800 firmware with custom C language routines and making the 5370 really sing! Your limit is pretty much your imagination. Oh, did I mention? It is on the ethernet with a full linux IP stack and firewall! Plug it into your router, and you can load, read, fiddle, and do just about anything far away from the actual 5370. I routinely send upgrades to my 5370 from clear across the building! -Chuck Harris (a very satisfied customer) John Seamons wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
On 02/24/2014 08:04 AM, Pete Lancashire wrote: Just a side note on running ethernet in your 'lab'. If your doing any low noise work you may want to pay a bit extra and get the shielded cables and make sure the RJ45 like sockets are of the shielded type. Example http://www.pchcables.com/cashstpnecaw.html (just a local supplier nothing else) -pete Amen to that. And don't use any old coax for distributing 10 MHz if you wish to hear WWV. Use some multiple shielded coax with high quality connectors. -- Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX c...@omen.com www.omen.com Developer of Industrial ZMODEM(Tm) for Embedded Applications Omen Technology Inc The High Reliability Software 10255 NW Old Cornelius Pass Portland OR 97231 503-614-0430 ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
What has me also interested is I have a 5370A with its front panel pretty much destroyed. BB has recently released a 7 touch screen LCD w/daughter board for $119. I see a project for next winter on the horizon. -pete On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 7:56 PM, John Seamons j...@jks.com wrote: Please excuse this commercial announcement (although it is a near-zero profit endeavor). I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Hi, I browsed the page and the GitHub repository for a while, and read the readme and read-more documents, but I still don't know what it actually adds. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document this? Cheers, D. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
Goto one of the places selling the BB Black and look up BB View. Not pushing this disty just one that has a decent image http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-55844/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-for-beaglebone-family-boards On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:50 AM, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I browsed the page and the GitHub repository for a while, and read the readme and read-more documents, but I still don't know what it actually adds. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document this? Cheers, D. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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] 5370 processor boards available
D I can give you some insights here. Others will be more effective. We all agree that the 5370 frequency counters are great devices from 1980. Right there is the first issue. The old micros are getting old and failing. I have lost both 6800s and eproms. Thank heavens stuff is still available. But this board replaces those items completely. Welcome to 2014. Now we just have to worry about big fat capacitors. In addition it gives you remote control other then GPIB. We all love GPIB, but us lazy types like Ethernet better. Cables are easier to manage. Finally the crazy thing is it gives you web services. Wow for a 1980s box. All while leaving the front panel operation intact for simple quick applications. The only thing that can be annoying is there is a shut down procedure for the unit now. It used to be power off. All of the above for $90. Hope that helps you. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Pete Lancashire p...@petelancashire.comwrote: Goto one of the places selling the BB Black and look up BB View. Not pushing this disty just one that has a decent image http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-55844/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-for-beaglebone-family-boards On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:50 AM, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I browsed the page and the GitHub repository for a while, and read the readme and read-more documents, but I still don't know what it actually adds. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document this? Cheers, D. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
In message cad2jfahdzgnfwnzkyo7sfj4pqvnussy8ns9u3sdjyf+vymt...@mail.gmail.com , paul swed writes: The only thing that can be annoying is there is a shut down procedure for the unit now. It used to be power off. That should be fixable, given enough Linux-clue. (I could trivially do it on FreeBSD, but don't know the incantations for Linux) -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] 5370 processor boards available
Thanks for the info. It could still be power off... just add a large capacitor as voltage backup and make the unit sense when power is off. It should be able to shut down quickly enough. That's how it works most of the time. Alternatively add some 1.5v batteries and a charger. That should never run out. Running a PC without backup power is asking for trouble. A few 1.5v batteries and a charger and buck-boost cost only 10 bucks. D. On 24 Feb 2014 18:57, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: D I can give you some insights here. Others will be more effective. We all agree that the 5370 frequency counters are great devices from 1980. Right there is the first issue. The old micros are getting old and failing. I have lost both 6800s and eproms. Thank heavens stuff is still available. But this board replaces those items completely. Welcome to 2014. Now we just have to worry about big fat capacitors. In addition it gives you remote control other then GPIB. We all love GPIB, but us lazy types like Ethernet better. Cables are easier to manage. Finally the crazy thing is it gives you web services. Wow for a 1980s box. All while leaving the front panel operation intact for simple quick applications. The only thing that can be annoying is there is a shut down procedure for the unit now. It used to be power off. All of the above for $90. Hope that helps you. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Pete Lancashire p...@petelancashire.comwrote: Goto one of the places selling the BB Black and look up BB View. Not pushing this disty just one that has a decent image http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-55844/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-for-beaglebone-family-boards On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:50 AM, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I browsed the page and the GitHub repository for a while, and read the readme and read-more documents, but I still don't know what it actually adds. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document this? Cheers, D. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
Going to leave the battery comment alone. Most people with HP and other gear of age have experienced the dreaded leaking batteries from really poorly designed charging circuits. Even HP did the resistor diode thing. Regards Paul. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:24 PM, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the info. It could still be power off... just add a large capacitor as voltage backup and make the unit sense when power is off. It should be able to shut down quickly enough. That's how it works most of the time. Alternatively add some 1.5v batteries and a charger. That should never run out. Running a PC without backup power is asking for trouble. A few 1.5v batteries and a charger and buck-boost cost only 10 bucks. D. On 24 Feb 2014 18:57, paul swed paulsw...@gmail.com wrote: D I can give you some insights here. Others will be more effective. We all agree that the 5370 frequency counters are great devices from 1980. Right there is the first issue. The old micros are getting old and failing. I have lost both 6800s and eproms. Thank heavens stuff is still available. But this board replaces those items completely. Welcome to 2014. Now we just have to worry about big fat capacitors. In addition it gives you remote control other then GPIB. We all love GPIB, but us lazy types like Ethernet better. Cables are easier to manage. Finally the crazy thing is it gives you web services. Wow for a 1980s box. All while leaving the front panel operation intact for simple quick applications. The only thing that can be annoying is there is a shut down procedure for the unit now. It used to be power off. All of the above for $90. Hope that helps you. Regards Paul WB8TSL On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Pete Lancashire p...@petelancashire.comwrote: Goto one of the places selling the BB Black and look up BB View. Not pushing this disty just one that has a decent image http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-55844/l/element14-bb-view-lcd-cape-for-beaglebone-family-boards On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:50 AM, cheater00 . cheate...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I browsed the page and the GitHub repository for a while, and read the readme and read-more documents, but I still don't know what it actually adds. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document this? Cheers, D. On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp p...@phk.freebsd.dk wrote: In message 45dfb8f9-3595-4a5d-8dcc-fd7317988...@jks.com, John Seamons writes: I am now accepting general orders for the hp 5370 processor replacement board. More info and ordering information at: www.jks.com/5370/5370.html As one of the Beta-testers I can highly recommend this, it really gives your HP5370 a kick into the next millenium. The potential for future improvements is also virtually unlimited: How about hooking up an LCD display and calculate and show allan variance in real time ? Thanks a LOT John! -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | 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 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. ___ 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] 5370 processor boards available
I may have a solution for the power-off problem that doesn't involve batteries or supercaps. It has the added advantage of providing instant-on. I need to run some tests.. ___ 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.
