That's kinda my point about using rs232. Serial to USB, serial to Ethernet  
adaptors will be available for  a good long while. 

Also why I like the idea of a standalone instrument that also has a pc 
interface of some sort.  Or a slot for a pc interface of whatever source I 
want. 

So how does one build the core counter with a start, a stop, and maybe a 10 MHz 
reference input with sub 5ps resolution and accuracy?



On Dec 19, 2010, at 3:50 PM, Bob Camp <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi
> 
> The gotcha with caps is that they don't block RF very well. Of course if you 
> go high enough in frequency, not much can be blocked anyway. 
> 
> Opto isolated RS-232 is just a pair of cheap optos, a couple of diodes and a 
> few resistors and caps. It costs next to nothing and it will work just fine 
> for any speed you are likely to need in a counter.  Spend $4 on a USB to 
> serial adapter and throw it away when the next generation of driver signing 
> (or what ever) renders it obsolete. Replace it with one that likely costs 50 
> cents then. I won't go into the possibility that it might cost half a Euro or 
> $50 ....
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> On Dec 19, 2010, at 12:01 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> 
>> In message <[email protected]>, jimlux writes:
>>> Bob Camp wrote:
>> 
>>> There are some nice solutions, though, using USB directly, which has the 
>>> advantage of providing a few watts of power.  Isolated DC/DC converters 
>>> are readily available.  you might be able to do transformer isolation of 
>>> the two data wires.
>> 
>> First: you want to use capacitors, not transformers.
>> 
>> Second: it is surprisingly tricky to get to work in practice, I have
>> only ever seen one device that managed to do so, and comply with
>> the USB standard, and the designer swore to never do it again.
>> 
>> People generally default to a small USB-enabled microcontroller
>> with an optocoupler to the real stuff.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
>> [email protected]         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
>> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
>> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
>> 
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