[time-nuts] Lucent KS-24361, HP/Symmetricom Z3809A, Z3810A, Z3811A, Z3812A GPSDO system

Bob Camp kb8tq at n1k.org
Tue Nov 4 12:43:24 UTC 2014


Hi

Ok so the correct pairs should be:

A 	1 		15
B	2		14
C	3		13 	
D	4		12
E	5		11
F	6		10
G	7		11

ground	8	8

Bob


> On Nov 4, 2014, at 4:38 AM, Stewart Cobb <stewart.cobb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> A wiring diagram of the Z3809A cable interconnect cable was published
> earlier on this list.  That information appears to be incorrect.  The
> cable is actually wired pin 1 to pin 15, pin 2 to pin 14, etc.
> Another way to describe it is that for each wire in the cable, the pin
> numbers on each end of the cable add up to 16.
> 
> A mated pair of these units is running in my lab with a scratch-built
> interconnect cable following the above rules.  This scratch-built
> cable allowed access to the interconnect signals while the system was
> operating happily.  No lights were lit except the green ON light on
> the Ref-0 unit (Z3812A, no GPS) and the yellow STBY light on the Ref-1
> unit (Z3911A with GPS receiver).  The following signals were observed
> on the interconnect (pin numbers given for the J5 interconnect socket
> on the Ref-1 unit):
> 
> Pin 1:  9600 baud serial data (described below)
> 
> Pin 2:  logic low (0.11V)
> 
> Pin 3:  Ground (0.00V)  Presence detect? (see below)
> 
> Pin 4:  logic high (4.79V)
> 
> Pin 5:  inverted Motorola PPS, high (5V) for 800ms, low for 200ms
> 
> Pin 6: "17 / 23 dBm" signal from Ref-0 unit (see below)
> 
> Pin 7:  logic high (4.48V)
> 
> Pin 8:  Ground (0.00V)
> 
> Pin 9:  logic low (0.11V)
> 
> Pin 10: "17 / 23 dBm" signal from Ref-1 unit (see below)
> 
> Pin 11:  inverted PPS, low 400us, high (5V) otherwise
> 
> Pin 12:  logic low (0.12V)
> 
> Pin 13:  Ground (0.00V)
> 
> Pin 14:  logic low (0.08V)
> 
> Pin 15:  logic high (4.78V)
> 
> Pins 3, 8, and 13 appear to be firmly connected to Ground.  (Note that
> these are the three pins which are clipped short on the HP
> interconnect cable.)  On an unpowered, disconnected box (either Ref-0
> or Ref-1), pins 8 and 13 are connected to Ground (low resistance) and
> pin 3 is high impedance.  Presumably pin 3 on each box (connected to
> the grounded pin 13 on the other box) is used to sense the presence of
> the other box and/or the interconnect cable.
> 
> The timing of the PPS signal on pin 11 matches precisely the timing of
> the PPS signal available on pins 1 and 6 of J6 (RS422/PPS) on the
> active Ref-0 unit.  Presumably this signal is coming across the cable
> from the Ref-0 unit.
> 
> Note: when the system is coming up from a cold start, SatStat on the
> unit with the GPS receiver (Ref-1) will show "[Ext 1PPS valid]" in the
> space where it shows "[GPS 1PPS valid]" after the survey is complete.
> It appears that the Ref-1 unit timing system is locking its oscillator
> to the PPS coming from the Ref-0 unit during this time.
> 
> The timing of the PPS signal on pin 5 matches the timing of the PPS
> output described in the Motorola OnCore manual.  Presumably this
> signal is sourced by the Ref-1 unit to allow the Ref-0 unit to lock to
> GPS.  The edges of this PPS signal look very dirty compared to the
> signal on pin 11.  This may be an artifact of the homemade cable used
> for this experiment.  The HP cable clearly has an overall shield
> (visible through the cable sheath) and may have internal coax or
> twisted pair for these PPS signals.
> 
> When pin 5 and pin 11 are observed together, the usual GPS sawtooth
> pattern is evident.
> 
> Someone discovered earlier that the both units will blink their green
> ON lights if the front-panel switch on either unit is set to 23 dBm
> vice the normal 17.  Obviously each unit can communicate its switch
> status to the other unit.  They use pins 6 and 10 to do that.  Pin 10
> (on the Ref-1 unit) is high (~5V)  if the switch on the Ref-1 unit is
> in the 17 dBm position, and low in the 23 dBm position. Pin 6 (on the
> Ref-1 unit) gives the same indications for the switch on the Ref-0
> unit.
> 
> The serial data on pin 1 is transmitted at 9600 baud, with a burst of
> data every second.  The signal idles at logic low (near 0V) and rises
> to logic high (near 5V) during the burst.  This may be the standard
> for TTL (not RS-232) transmission of serial data, or it may be
> inverted.  The first few characters of one burst were hand-decoded
> from a scope trace as 0x40, 0x40, 0x45, 0x61, 0x0B, or ASCII "@@Ea".
> This appears to be the Motorola Oncore binary data format, although
> "Ea" does not appear to be a valid Motorola command or response.
> Perhaps the hand-decoding was in error.
> 
> One can use SatStat, talking to the Ref-0 (non-GPS) box, to issue
> queries and commands to the GPS receiver.  The results are
> inconsistent, but it seems that at least some of the queries get
> through and trigger responses.  If the Ref-0 box is actually talking
> to the GPS receiver, it must be doing so through the interconnect
> cable.  The specific wire in the cable used for this (if any) has not
> yet been identified.
> 
> An earlier post speculated that the computer in each unit only had two
> UARTs.  This does not seem possible.  Clearly each unit uses one UART
> to communicate with the J8 diagnostic port.  The Ref-1 unit needs
> another UART to communicate with the GPS receiver. And both units need
> to be able to transmit the legacy Lucent timecode message out the J6
> (RS422/1PPS) port.  Perhaps there is a transmit-only UART coded into
> the FPGA, or perhaps one of the UARTs is timeshared with the Lucent
> message, or perhaps there is another UART chip hidden somewhere on the
> board.
> 
> It seems unlikely that the two units are sending serial data to each
> other.  (No such data was observed on the interconnect.)  Instead,
> they appear to communicate their state to each other by means of logic
> levels on various pins of the cable.  The logic functions of pins 6
> and 10 have already been identified.  Further research is needed.
> 
> Cheers!
> --Stu
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