[time-nuts] TTi TF930/960 linux programming

Florian Teply usenet at teply.info
Tue May 12 19:58:34 UTC 2015


Hi guys,

I seem to recall that someone on this list mentioned that he's using a
Thurlby-Tandar TF930 or 960 Frequency counter. As I'm considering to
buy such a unit for some experiments at my workplace, I figured I'd
better ask around here for some suggestions.

Has someone already used one of these gadgets in a computer-controlled
fashion, with some luck using some Linux environment? Judging from the
manual, I probably ccould hack some shell script to repeatedly perform
frequency readings and write that to a file, but if someone already has
done that I'd be much too lazy to reinvent the wheel...

The actual setting I'd plan to use it in is to monitor some ring
oscillators (frequency drift) and/or delay lines (output pulse length)
sort-of-continuously over extended periods of time. I'd be interested
in frequency drifts due to device aging and/or radiation effects, and
as especially device aging tests can take quite some time (a few months
each...), some sort of stability would be needed. This is not strictly
a time-nuts application where one might chase the 10th digit, and I
figure I probably could tolerate (and wouldn't even notice without
cross-checking) an constant offset in frequency readings even of a few
percent, but it would bite me quite a bit if the readings wander around
too much when the input frequency doesn't...

Any suggestions?

best regards,
Florian



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