[time-nuts] Re: Ref out on Keysight 53230A

[Bob Camp]

Hi

If you put the input and output into a Phase Station, you can see glitches …..

Bob

> On Jan 19, 2023, at 7:16 PM, Bill Notfaded <notfaded1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I also have a 53230A.  Maybe comparing the freq out to the source of a good short and long term reference with a couple SRS620 would be worth doing?
> 
> Bill
> 
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:08 PM Bob Camp via time-nuts <time-nuts at lists.febo.com <mailto:time-nuts at lists.febo.com>> wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> About as far as I can go on this one:
>> 
>> Early on TVB got ahold of an example of one of these. He did some testing and was 
>> not real excited by the results. He posted the info here on the list and most of us avoided 
>> the counters as a result. 
>> 
>> Eventually ( being the insane person that you all know me to be ) I gave one a try. The 
>> YouTube video roped me in :). What can I say? marketing works …. 
>> 
>> I dug into this and that. I duplicated (and improved on) the data in the video. The big issue 
>> seemed to be the Ref out. For me that was OK since I’m not going to daisy chain the units. 
>> They all will run on an external standard of some sort. Yes’ it’s a shame you can’t use that
>> OCXO in the counter ( if you got that option) for anything. The caution from TVB is spot
>> on in this respect. 
>> 
>> Best guess from looking at what’s going on: 
>> 
>> When they get done with a series of readings, the power demand drops abruptly. 
>> ( = whatever it is does correlate with measurements ending). That load dump on 
>> the power supply / ground creates a bump somehow ( there’s none obvious, but
>> I’d bet there’s one there …). That dump puts a phase hit on the ref out. ( = Watch 
>> then ref out and you can see it has issues relative to ref in.)
>> 
>> So not very scientific. I dug in a bit, but didn’t find anything obvious. Since it was 
>> not a big deal for me, I stopped digging. 
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>> > On Jan 19, 2023, at 2:10 PM, Hal Murray via time-nuts <time-nuts at lists.febo.com <mailto:time-nuts at lists.febo.com>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Bob Camp said:
>> >> The other rabbit hole involves the 5323x counters in general. Their ref out
>> >> ports have issues.  One could be a bit more descriptive, but this is a public
>> >> list.
>> > 
>> > What did they do wrong?  There must be an educational story behind that.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > These are my opinions.  I hate spam.
>> > 
>> > 
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