[time-nuts] Thunderbolt E failing

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

The unit you most commonly see is a version done for E911 cell tower upgrades. 
It was an intermediate step to add that functionality before it could be done internal 
to the cell base station. Once the “real” solution came along, the E911 boxes became
scrap. They went off to China to be salvaged. 

The one in the listing is simply the board you normally see mated up with a power supply.
Trimble shipped them out mainly as evaluation devices. The bulk of what was produced
went into the E911 application. 

There is a bunch of information on all this back in the archives 10 to 15 years ago. Searching
those archives is a bit of a challenge with all the changes in the list over the years. 

Functionally, there is no difference between the one you are looking at and the more common
one. Both came in a variety of firmware versions. Both have a range of OCXO’s in them
(99% all from the same source, but changing designs over the years …). Without digging 
into the exact board, there is no easy way to see what’s what. The good news is that they
all pretty much work fine.

Bob

> On Sep 12, 2020, at 5:43 PM, Adrian Godwin <artgodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> The one I've seen pictured most often comes in a (I think) slightly lower
> gold-coloured (alocromed) case.
> e.g. http://www.sydneystormcity.com/TrimbleThunderboltGPS.jpg
> Is that any different ?
> 
> I did order the one from my link so will report on any markings. The vendor
> mentioned part 48050-61 but as you say, that seems to be common to all of
> them.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 10:14 PM Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> The unit your link points to *is* the “classic” TBolt that showed up in
>> volume a bit
>> over a decade ago. That one is packaged with a (noisy) switching power
>> supply.
>> 
>> There is no easy way to tell what era it is from. Indeed if it is from the
>> 1990’s the
>> OCXO will not be quite as good as what’s in one from > 2002. Since the
>> unit normally
>> operates locked, that’s not a real big deal.
>> 
>> Since Trimble used “Thunderbolt” for a whole line of parts *and* was not
>> very good
>> at labeling devices, there is no easy way to refer to this or that
>> specific device. That
>> makes coming up with a list of units a bit hard. For example - what’s the
>> model number
>> of the part in that eBay listing ? ( No I don’t know either …. :) ).
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>>> On Sep 12, 2020, at 12:28 PM, Adrian Godwin <artgodwin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I've been looking for a thunderbolt for a while, mostly because they're
>>> such a benchmark within this group. I missed the period when they were
>> more
>>> commonly available and have mostly found ones that were a lot more
>>> expensive, or had a large delivery cost due to being in Australia.
>>> 
>>> Some cheaper examples turned up on UK ebay. These aren't the classic
>>> time-nuts ones but presumably look fairly similar to Lady Heather.
>>> 
>>> https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154078750287
>>> 
>>> I haven't been able to find a comparison of the various thunderbolt
>> models.
>>> Is there a description somewhere ? I've found a few hints about this one
>> -
>>> I think it's a single 48V supply and possibly a lower-quality OCXO.
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 5:14 PM Kevin Schuchmann <kschuchm at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Matthias,
>>>>   You are correct, having spent hours looking at all the stable areas
>>>> and cooling and heating the gpsdo I find that when it reports that it is
>>>> 116.25 F then it is stable.
>>>> So now I guess I need to figure out why it is so picky. I will measure
>>>> the current draw from a cold start and see if I see the oven warming up
>>>> and then stabilizing and then heat and cool it and see how it reacts,
>>>> and also look at the electronics and see if an area is overly sensitive
>>>> to temperature.
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Kevin
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 9/11/2020 2:26 AM, Matthias Welwarsky wrote:
>>>>> On Freitag, 11. September 2020 01:08:09 CEST Kevin Schuchmann wrote:
>>>>>> Guess my image didn't make it, I will add it as an attachment this
>> time.
>>>>> The temperature curve seems to show some correlation to what is
>>>> happening with
>>>>> the DAC. Seems that the DAC and OSC jumps are mostly during periods of
>>>> some
>>>>> thermal perturbation.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> Matthias
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at 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 mailing list -- time-nuts at 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 mailing list -- time-nuts at 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 mailing list -- time-nuts at 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 mailing list -- time-nuts at lists.febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com
> and follow the instructions there.