Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-08-01 Thread Bob Paddock
Jitter specs assume a logic waveform input, not a sine wave input. Many jitter specs refer to pattern jitter of data, which does not apply to clocks. Also, jitter increases at low frequencies in practice, even though in theory it should not. Like I said, this topic is very tricky. How

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-08-01 Thread Bruce Griffiths
Bob Paddock wrote: Jitter specs assume a logic waveform input, not a sine wave input. Many jitter specs refer to pattern jitter of data, which does not apply to clocks. Also, jitter increases at low frequencies in practice, even though in theory it should not. Like I said, this topic is

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread SAIDJACK
Hi Bruce, that would work too. We get 330fs jitter rms with this circuit using the Fairchild UHS LVC family, that's pretty much the noise floor of the OCXO :) If you use a bias network, you won't get 50% symmetry since it will never perfectly match the inverter's inflection point (which

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread SAIDJACK
Hello Bruce, I believe a driver for an FPGA running at 350MHz was the initial query, 6GHz BW and crystal filters are probably overkill. bye, Said In a message dated 7/31/2008 01:59:34 Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, however it is quieter and adding duty cycle

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Rick Karlquist
Two things NOT to do: 1. Do NOT use ECL. CMOS is much lower jitter. 2. Do NOT use a comparator to square up the sine wave. Especially don't use a ultrafast ECL based comparator. --- Some things that you should do: Make all circuitry differential if

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Didier Juges
of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit? Two things NOT to do: 1. Do NOT use ECL. CMOS is much lower jitter. 2. Do NOT use a comparator to square up the sine wave. Especially don't use a ultrafast ECL based

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Rick Karlquist
-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit? Two things NOT to do: 1. Do NOT use ECL. CMOS is much lower jitter. 2. Do NOT use a comparator to square up the sine wave. Especially don't use a ultrafast ECL based comparator. ___ time

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Luis Cupido
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit? Two things NOT to do: 1. Do NOT use ECL. CMOS is much lower jitter. 2. Do NOT use a comparator to square up the sine wave. Especially don't use a ultrafast ECL based comparator

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Pete
The JPL paper is here: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1990/Vol%2022_20.pdf Pete Rawson ___ 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] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread John Miles
In any event, if you actually test real comparators, you will find them to be universally lousy. I will be happy to be proven wrong if someone is aware of a good comparator. It's just that I have never met I comparator I liked :-) I think you're right about that. About the best thing you

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread John Miles
I do agree with Richard, comparators are quite bad... Having played with interfacing signals to FPGA 'ad nausea' I found that the only simple scheme that works better than biased (or feedback) cmos gates and of course much better than ECL line receivers or comparators (even cmos gates

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Bruce Griffiths
Pete wrote: The JPL paper is here: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1990/Vol%2022_20.pdf Pete Rawson Pete You can usually do much better than that. The Collins paper indicates how. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?isnumber=10665arnumber=494304type=ref

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Rick Karlquist
John Miles wrote: Modern ECL parts aren't necessarily that bad compared to the old MECL stuff. My experience goes all the way back to the MECL 1000 series that was discontinued 30 years ago. I designed many synthesizers around them for Zeta Labs. Every newer family of ECL line receivers has

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread John Miles
Modern ECL parts aren't necessarily that bad compared to the old MECL stuff. My experience goes all the way back to the MECL 1000 series that was discontinued 30 years ago. I designed many synthesizers around them for Zeta Labs. Every newer family of ECL line receivers has been faster

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-31 Thread Richard (Rick) Karlquist
John Miles wrote: Modern ECL parts aren't necessarily that bad compared to the old MECL stuff. My experience goes all the way back to the MECL 1000 series that was discontinued 30 years ago. I designed many synthesizers around them for Zeta Labs. Every newer family of ECL line receivers

[time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-30 Thread Bob Paddock
Can you point me to a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing circuit that I can feed a Actel Igloo FPGA (It doesn't like sine waves)? For the sake of discussion the source signal is a ThunderBolt at 10 MHz. The FPGA is rated to 350 MHz, so no need to have a 5. GHz Zero Crossing circuit.

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-30 Thread SAIDJACK
Hi Bob, since the sine wave is symmetric, you can use a simple LVC type CMOS inverter with 1M Ohm resistor from input to output, and a 100nF cap (or the largest COG cap you can find) from the input of the inverter to the sine wave output. You may also want to load the sine wave output

Re: [time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?

2008-07-30 Thread Bruce Griffiths
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Bob, since the sine wave is symmetric, you can use a simple LVC type CMOS inverter with 1M Ohm resistor from input to output, and a 100nF cap (or the largest COG cap you can find) from the input of the inverter to the sine wave output. You may also