[time-nuts] Ha! It LIVES!!

[Bruce Lane]

	Not that long ago, I mentioned that my Trak Systems 8820 clock had stopped tracking the GPS birds. Initially, I thought it was receiver failure. However, at the time, I also had antenna issues (limited to indoor-only, albeit high gain).

	I just finished putting in a normal outdoor reference antenna this afternoon (an HP 58532A, to be specific). My other GPS devices (the Z3801 and the TrueTime NTS-200) responded to it beautifully, but the Trak refused to cooperate.

	This evening, after dinner, I got annoyed and dug into the Trak unit, pulling out its GPS engine for a close inspection. Lo and behold (and their cousin Irving), what did I find but at least TWO cold solder joints on the main 20-pin connector going to the interface board! Suspicions up, I also inspected several of the surface-mount chips, including the module's onboard CPU, and... MORE bad joints, this time in the form of poor reflow.

	Out came the heat gun, on went the small-area tip for it, and I proceeded to reflow all four sides of the CPU. While I was at it, I also noticed a tiny solder blob -- barely visible -- that appeared to be shorting a via to a ground trace. A few seconds work with a dental pick sent said blob into the wastebasket where it belonged.

	Reflow done, blob removed, and header resoldered, I put the whole thing back together, hooked it up to the new antenna feed, and powered on. After about ten minutes, it reported tracking 2 birds. A couple of minutes later, it set its clock correctly, and reported tracking six birds.

	The moral of the story -- Never assume component failure before you do a very thorough physical inspection. The problem may be simpler to fix than you think.

	Keep the peace(es).


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Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"