[time-nuts] FE-5680A performance

[Tom Van Baak]

> I also don't like the way the TSC shows the frequency, and the fact that  
> you can only capture about 9 minutes of information for some reason. Why not  
> show 24 hours or 48 hours of data here?

Said,

The 9+ minutes (540+ seconds) is due to the 640 pixel display
minus the soft menu that appears on the right side. 

The TSC doesn't save all the raw data from the run and thus you
can't pan or zoom over the data like you would expect. Note there
is no harddrive in the TSC (the CF card is just a boot filesystem).

So there are two tricks you can use. The first is what I do, which
is to capture all the raw phase data from the TSC, logging it on PC,
and then use Stable32 or TimeLab to manipulate or plot as much
or as little of the data as desired. Many of the plots on my web site
are created this way. I almost always begin a log of raw data before
I press start on a TSC analyzer. That way I have a permanent copy
of all the phase data, from which all other analysis is based.

Depending on the model of TSC, the raw phase data is delivered
by RS-232 or LAN at rates of 1 Hz, 100 Hz, or 1 kHz. For really
long runs (days or weeks, even months) I typically use 1 Hz.

The second solution, one I would strongly recommend, is to use
the live capture capability in TimeLab. John has built-in support
for a number of popular counters, including the TSC. I'm pretty
sure you can get it going in a matter of minutes; you will never
look back.

/tvb