[time-nuts] Re: CF cards and the Trimble NetRS

[paul swed]

Well Bob
There you go changing the game just a bit. I saw the NTP settings and was
thinking for some reason it might want to access a NTP server. I can see I
have it backwards. Just may add a IP. I would have gotten there given time.
But I will take a short cut any day.
The Net RS is reasonably low power at 12V @ .35A or 4.5W. Its not apparent
in the unit that the power coming in hits an inverter. I think its a linear
regulator. Nothing looked like a choke for conversion.
Did stick the antenna out of the window for a clearer view of the sky and
picked up 8-10 db. The house blocks to the north.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:

> Hi
>
> More NetRS trivia:
>
> One of the features of the NetRS is that it will act as an NTP server.
> It’s not the most modern device so I very much would not want to
> serve a ton of clients off of one. It also has been a *long* time since
> the OS was patched. If you are looking for “modern” features or
> security patches, maybe not the best thing to use. It certainly isn’t
> going to compete with the Leo Bodnar NTP in terms of size or
> power consumption. You won’t get a steady stream of updates and
> patches like you would on something cool from Meinberg.
>
> That said, for a “shop for a while” sub $150 sort of price, they would
> be a reasonable deal. Not many packaged NTP products on eBay
> that you “just plug in” and that run multi-band GPS. You would get
> the frequency monitoring and RTK base station stuff “for free”.
>
> Can you / could you / might you upgrade the OS? Since there really
> isn’t much info on what the hardware looks like, that could be
> exciting. The cards are “locked down” (though not encrypted) as
> received so even poking around to try this or that isn’t trivial. How
> much was done (if anything) to keep the OS “out of the way” of the
> GPS code …. who knows ….
>
> Fun !!
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> > On Mar 21, 2022, at 1:01 PM, John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com> wrote:
> >
> > You can stream data out of the receiver via either TCP or serial port
> without storing to disk, so that's probably the best bet to save CF wear
> and tear.  I'm not sure if it's more difficult to turn the
> >
> > But for now I'm doing as you suggest -- I have one "T00" format session
> logging to disk in 24 hour files, with the "autodelete" function turned on
> to delete oldest files first when the disk gets nearly full.
> >
> > However, I've been collecting data now for almost 4 months, and have
> used 68.5 MB, with 770 MB still available, so I won't need to delete
> anything for quite a long while.
> >
> > John
> > ----
> >
> > On 3/21/22 11:22, Skip Withrow wrote:
> >> Hello Time-Nuts,
> >> Seems like there has been a lot of interest in the NetRS lately
> >> because of their availability at reasonable prices (sometimes).
> >> They use a Compact Flash card to store the operating system and logged
> >> data files.  I'm not very knowledgeable about Linux, but I would guess
> >> that there is no wear leveling implemented in this receiver.
> >> So, when considering how best to use the data logging area it would
> >> seem that instead of collecting some data, downloading it, deleting
> >> file(s), and repeating the best strategy would be to collect data and
> >> let the data logging area fill up before deleting (the files could be
> >> read anytime).
> >> This would minimize the number of writes to any one area of the CF
> >> card I believe (except perhaps the directory structure).
> >> However, even if you were deleting data often, you still may not be
> >> able to get to the life of the CF card.  The good news is that even if
> >> a card does go bad you can reconstruct a new one from the image of
> >> version 1.3-2 of the software that is floating around.  I have tried
> >> it and it works.
> >> If there is better insight into the operation of this receiver, or
> >> best practices strategy I'm all ears.
> >> Regards,
> >> Skip Withrow
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