> Since Symmetricom has recently purchased the entire line of frequency and time > products from Agilent, Symmetricom has already announced that they will > discontinue support of most of them. They are notoriously unhelpful even for > current products they manufacture. Other old manufacurers have already discarded > all documentation and spare parts. So my advice is to avoid buying all older > atomic standard units made by Varian, Trak, and HP unless you have more than one > to use for parts.
Quite true. The other way to look at it, though, is that it just makes the surplus market better for the hobbyist. Many of us have 5061A cesium's, for example, even though that model was discontinued by HP close to 20 years ago. That's part of the reason you can buy a used one for 1/100th the original price. Symmetricom makes some very cool stuff; the sooner they drop stuff from the product line the sooner you'll seem them for cents on the dollar on eBay... Consider also the Z3801A. That one discontinued product has enabled literally hundreds of amateurs access to cheap precise time & frequency like never before. /tvb http://www.leapsecond.com/time-nuts.htm _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts