[time-nuts] Trimble Resolution-T 52664-35

[Skip Withrow]

Hello Time-Nuts,

I just had a learning experience with the Trimble Resolution-T, so I
thought I would document it here and perhaps save time-nuts some time in
the future.  RDR Electronics has sold a number of telecom surplus
Resolution-T units (p/n- 52664-35) and we recently had a customer that said
he could not talk to the unit.  I fired one up and, sure enough, found the
exact same problem - no TSIP communications.  After a little
experimentation I found that I could communicate with the unit using
Trimble GPS Studio and that the unit was in TEP mode (a Trimble emulation
of the Motorola commands).  Unit is also 9600,N,8,1 (instead of Res-T
9600,O,8,1 default).

Apparently, the standard Trimble product is 52664-05.  The -35 units
identify as 'Timing Receiver' and have firmware 1.16.  There is a time-nut
archive that says you can change the mode to TSIP with GPS Studio, which I
successfully did, however I could never make it stick.  It seems that the
Save Changes issues some kind of reset that always puts it back in TEP mode
(before the TSIP mode is written to NVRAM).

So, to solve this problem I downloaded the Trimble 1.17 firmware (upgrade
from 1.14).  It does successfully load into the -35 units (despite the many
warnings in the documentation).  It identifies as a Resolution-T now and
defaults to TSIP at 9600,O,8,1.

The units that we are listing on ebay will have the 1.17 firmware loaded
into them (and will be tested).  If you purchase units from other vendors
with the 52664-35 part number be aware that they will most likely be in TEP
mode (unless they specifically address this issue).

Hope this information helps any prospective Trimble Resolution-T users.
They are nice receivers designed for timing applications - 3.3V,
12-channel, 1pps, with sawtooth correction output.

Regards,
Skip Withrow

This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast.
www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email>
<#DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>