Re: [time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?
Hi All, Sorry I forgot to attach the freq vs DAC voltage table to the email that I just sent: DAC V Freq +5.0 9.999.961 +0.0 9.999.985 -3.0 9.999.998 -3.5 10.000.000 -3.8 10.000.001 -4.0 10.000.002 -4.5 10.000.004 -5.0 10.000.006 So the oscillator is not "centered" on 10.000.000 anymore. 73, Roger W3SZ On 9/26/2019 1:06 PM, Roger Rehr W3SZ wrote: Hi Nigel, and Bob, and Bill! Thanks for the notes! I very much appreciate your helpful comments. I will give my responses to all of your helpful posts here. Sorry for the delay in responses. The reason for the delay is that my Thunderbolt is at a remote site and I can communicate with it via Lady Heather remotely, but I had to drive out to the site to do the tests with an HP 5342A frequency counter and pulse analysis of the pps port. I drove out to the site today. First, Bob and Bill, 1. DAC set to +0.5 V gives significant frequency errors: HP counter reads 9.999.984 MHz and osc error as reported by LH is 1,68x,xxx.xx ppt. Interestingly, at this voltage pps error is flipping between +50 and -50. The DAC voltage that minimizes both counter error and pps/osc error as reported by LH is around -3.553 V. This is dramatically different than the setting last October when all was working well, as you know. With DAC voltage -3.553 V the osc error and pps error are reduced, but they jump around quite a bit: pps short-term variation is for example between about +50 and -50 and osc short term variation is between about +5000 and -5000. HP counter reads 10.000.000 MHz. Even when I have the DAC close enough to optimum that my counter reads 10.000.000 MHz and the osc error is flipping around both sides of zero, the unit stays in "Power-up" mode and the DAC voltage stays at wherever I set it (either using d>>s or &>>i and then power cycle) and does not vary. 2. I get a 10 usec duration +5V pulse every 1.00 seconds from the PPS port, as per specifications. I cannot give you greater precision than that on the pulse interval. Nigel, I agree that something appears odd with this unit that had been running with no problems for at least a year at my location. There have been no known system / config changes by me, although there is always the chance that I fat-fingered something when playing with the Lady Heather display at some point. The receiver self identifies as a TSIP (Trimble TSIP Binary) receiver when Lady Heather starts up. The receiver type is not specified in my cfg file, which instead has the default line /rx which as you know means auto-detect receiver type. I had assumed that the "Nortel NTGS/NTBW" designation that you mention and that appears on the Lady Heather parameter display had something to do with Trimble having supplied the unit I now have to Nortel and this "Nortel NTGS/NTBW" designation being a custom ID placed in the firmware so that the unit would be "branded" as Nortel. This supposition is consistent with line 2170 of the heather.txt file which says "Trimble telecom GPSDOs (NTBW,NTPX,NTGS,etc)". There is also a line in the heather.pdf file that says, "Note that non-Thunderbolt GPSDOs (such as the NTBW and NTPx telecom devices) do not all support saving disciplining parameters to EEPROM and some do not allow users to change the disciplining parameters. You can use "/d" command line options for setting the PLL parameters from the command line. If you run the auto-tune command on non-Thunderbolt devices then only the satellite elevation mask (and perhaps the signal level mask) values will be set". The physical unit is labeled "Trimble THUNDERBOLT", so I guess, looking at all of the data, that I have a Trimble / Nortel device. But the issue of whether it is a Nortel/Trimble Thunderbolt or just a Thunderbolt wouldn't cause the current problem that I am having now in a unit that previously worked perfectly for me. Just so you know that my heather.cfg file is "OK" and not responsible for any problems, here it is: /9 /rx /br=9600:8:n:1 /ro=1* /tz=-5EST/EDT /b=1 /tb=W3SZ /gm /gw=0 /gqw /gcs- /gcg To further document that this issue is not a "setup" problem, I did another factory reset of the unit and then did not use Lady Heather but only monitored function with TBoltMon.exe and I did not do any setup with that utility until the self survey was done and more than two hours had passed, and then I only set and saved the position. Function and results were unchanged, and the unit was still stuck in Power-Up mode and DAC voltage was still stuck at zero, but everything else was normal according to the TBoltMon readouts. Thanks again and 73, Roger W3SZ ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Nigel, and Bob, and Bill! Thanks for the notes! I very much appreciate your helpful comments. I will give my responses to all of your helpful posts here. Sorry for the delay in responses. The reason for the delay is that my Thunderbolt is at a remote site and I can communicate with it via Lady Heather remotely, but I had to drive out to the site to do the tests with an HP 5342A frequency counter and pulse analysis of the pps port. I drove out to the site today. First, Bob and Bill, 1. DAC set to +0.5 V gives significant frequency errors: HP counter reads 9.999.984 MHz and osc error as reported by LH is 1,68x,xxx.xx ppt. Interestingly, at this voltage pps error is flipping between +50 and -50. The DAC voltage that minimizes both counter error and pps/osc error as reported by LH is around -3.553 V. This is dramatically different than the setting last October when all was working well, as you know. With DAC voltage -3.553 V the osc error and pps error are reduced, but they jump around quite a bit: pps short-term variation is for example between about +50 and -50 and osc short term variation is between about +5000 and -5000. HP counter reads 10.000.000 MHz. Even when I have the DAC close enough to optimum that my counter reads 10.000.000 MHz and the osc error is flipping around both sides of zero, the unit stays in "Power-up" mode and the DAC voltage stays at wherever I set it (either using d>>s or &>>i and then power cycle) and does not vary. 2. I get a 10 usec duration +5V pulse every 1.00 seconds from the PPS port, as per specifications. I cannot give you greater precision than that on the pulse interval. Nigel, I agree that something appears odd with this unit that had been running with no problems for at least a year at my location. There have been no known system / config changes by me, although there is always the chance that I fat-fingered something when playing with the Lady Heather display at some point. The receiver self identifies as a TSIP (Trimble TSIP Binary) receiver when Lady Heather starts up. The receiver type is not specified in my cfg file, which instead has the default line /rx which as you know means auto-detect receiver type. I had assumed that the "Nortel NTGS/NTBW" designation that you mention and that appears on the Lady Heather parameter display had something to do with Trimble having supplied the unit I now have to Nortel and this "Nortel NTGS/NTBW" designation being a custom ID placed in the firmware so that the unit would be "branded" as Nortel. This supposition is consistent with line 2170 of the heather.txt file which says "Trimble telecom GPSDOs (NTBW,NTPX,NTGS,etc)". There is also a line in the heather.pdf file that says, "Note that non-Thunderbolt GPSDOs (such as the NTBW and NTPx telecom devices) do not all support saving disciplining parameters to EEPROM and some do not allow users to change the disciplining parameters. You can use "/d" command line options for setting the PLL parameters from the command line. If you run the auto-tune command on non-Thunderbolt devices then only the satellite elevation mask (and perhaps the signal level mask) values will be set". The physical unit is labeled "Trimble THUNDERBOLT", so I guess, looking at all of the data, that I have a Trimble / Nortel device. But the issue of whether it is a Nortel/Trimble Thunderbolt or just a Thunderbolt wouldn't cause the current problem that I am having now in a unit that previously worked perfectly for me. Just so you know that my heather.cfg file is "OK" and not responsible for any problems, here it is: /9 /rx /br=9600:8:n:1 /ro=1* /tz=-5EST/EDT /b=1 /tb=W3SZ /gm /gw=0 /gqw /gcs- /gcg To further document that this issue is not a "setup" problem, I did another factory reset of the unit and then did not use Lady Heather but only monitored function with TBoltMon.exe and I did not do any setup with that utility until the self survey was done and more than two hours had passed, and then I only set and saved the position. Function and results were unchanged, and the unit was still stuck in Power-Up mode and DAC voltage was still stuck at zero, but everything else was normal according to the TBoltMon readouts. Thanks again and 73, Roger W3SZ ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks to Bill and Mike for the very helpful info! Unfortunately, doing warm reset, cold reset, factory reset, multiple self surveys did not solve the problem. Forcing Disciplining to Enabled did not help. Tuning the oscillator did not help. I can manually control the DAC voltage using appropriate commands and the 10 MHz output changes appropriately following each manual command. But the DAC voltage doesn't respond to GPS input. I note from my old records that when the unit is working properly and the DAC IS being controlled by the GPS, Lady Heather still says "Doing fixes", because fixes are in fact being done. But when Lady Heather is working properly, she says that the Discipline mode is "Normal" instead of "Power-Up" as she does now. I used TBoltMon.exe to see if I could get any more info on the problem. In TBoltMon.exe's GUI under "Disciplining Status" Mode is listed as "(1) Power-up" and Activity is listed as "(1) Osc Warm-up". So I wondered if the problem is that the Thunderbolt thinks that the oscillator has not warmed up and therefore won't come out of Power-Up mode. But the manual says that the Tunderbolt won't start acquiring satellites and do the self survey until it has warmed up. And the situation is that it has acquired satellites and it has done the self survey, both of which would suggest that it thinks that the oscillator HAS warmed up. The the TBoltMon reading on the oscillator status seems to be inconsistent with how the Thunderbolt is performing; it is acting like the oscillator IS warmed up, at least in some respects. Are there any schematics or diagrams or service manuals available for the Thunderbolt? I couldn't find any with Google. Thanks again to Bill and Mike and all for your help! 73, Roger W3SZ On 9/24/2019 1:32 PM, Roger Rehr W3SZ wrote: HI All, I am wondering if I have set up my Trimble Thunderbolt wrong. I have corrected for roll-over and everything looks good in Lady Heather but the Thunderbolt stays in Power-up mode according to Lady Heather, and is always "doing fixes" even though I have entered the lat and lon for a fixed location. According to Lady Heather Disciplining is OK, and of course the log reflects this as well #! new minor alarm state 0800: Tracking sats Discipline OK : at tow 235167 You can see the situation from this screen grab of Lady Heather: http://w3sz.com/TrimbleLadyHeather.PNG Have I done something wrong in configuration, or is this consistent Power-up mode and "doing fixes" notation the expected behavior? I am using the Thunderbolt as at 10 MHz source for my microwave station. Thanks in advance and 73, Roger Rehr W3SZ ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Bill, Thanks for the note! I leave the Trimble Thunderbolt powered up all the time because since the last rollover in April it takes a long time to find the satellites and it doesn't give 10 MHz output until it has found the satellites for the first time, so none of my gear that is fed by it works until it has achieved satellite lock at least once after being powered up. After that it will give (undisciplined) 10 MHz output when it loses satellites. I don't know if that lack of initial output is normal or not, because before the last rollover it would find the satellites quickly, before I had the rest of the station ready to go so I never noticed. The Thunderbolt had been up and running continuously, stuck in the power-up mode for well more that a week without progressing to normal mode when I decided today to power it down and restart it to see if it would then advance from power-up to normal mode. It has been more than 4 hours since I restarted it earlier today and it still is in power-up mode. You are right that the DAC is consistently 0. PPS error jumps around between -50 and +50 ns. OSC error is consistently in the range of 543000 to 548000 ppt. I don't understand why is says "Discipline OK" when it isn't disciplining, given the DAC voltage of zero and the large oscillator error. All of this is a recent development. The last time I took a screen grab of Lady Heather, last October, all looked well as you can see in the screen grab from last October: http://w3sz.com/LadyHeatherScreen.PNG I was hoping that I had recently accidentally set some setting incorrectly and that this would therefore be an easy fix. I guess that is not the case :( Thanks again Bill and 73, Roger W3SZ On 9/24/2019 3:10 PM, Bill Beam wrote: How long has unit been powered on? GPS looks ok but osc is not locked, osc error is high at 500K ppt, should be below 50ppt. DAC shows no activity. Give it time (maybe an hour) to see if it goes from 'Power-up' to 'Normal" On Tue, 24 Sep 2019 13:32:18 -0400, Roger Rehr W3SZ wrote: HI All, I am wondering if I have set up my Trimble Thunderbolt wrong. I have corrected for roll-over and everything looks good in Lady Heather but the Thunderbolt stays in Power-up mode according to Lady Heather, and is always "doing fixes" even though I have entered the lat and lon for a fixed location. According to Lady Heather Disciplining is OK, and of course the log reflects this as well #! new minor alarm state 0800:- Tracking sats- - Discipline OK- - : at tow 235167 You can see the situation from this screen grab of Lady Heather: http://w3sz.com/TrimbleLadyHeather.PNG Have I done something wrong in configuration, or is this consistent Power-up mode and "doing fixes" notation the expected behavior? ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?
HI All, I am wondering if I have set up my Trimble Thunderbolt wrong. I have corrected for roll-over and everything looks good in Lady Heather but the Thunderbolt stays in Power-up mode according to Lady Heather, and is always "doing fixes" even though I have entered the lat and lon for a fixed location. According to Lady Heather Disciplining is OK, and of course the log reflects this as well #! new minor alarm state 0800: Tracking sats Discipline OK : at tow 235167 You can see the situation from this screen grab of Lady Heather: http://w3sz.com/TrimbleLadyHeather.PNG Have I done something wrong in configuration, or is this consistent Power-up mode and "doing fixes" notation the expected behavior? I am using the Thunderbolt as at 10 MHz source for my microwave station. Thanks in advance and 73, Roger Rehr W3SZ ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
