[time-nuts] HP 5372A advice

[Morris Odell]

Thanks very much for your reply Magnus,

> I strongly advice you to download the manuals. It is an instrument that 
> is puzzling at times, so the manuals are needed. The upside is that they 
> are really interesting. The operators and programming manuals get you 
> understand what it really does. You also want the service manual.
> Anyway, last time I looked I could download them from Agilent/Keysight.

I have downloaded what's there, unfortunately there's no operator's manual but I did the "Getting Started Guide" with the instrument. The prog manual might stimulate me to get GPIB up and running.

> Trigger jitter. More importantly, now you see it!
> The trigger jitter follows the formula:

> t_jitter = e_n / S

> e_n is the noise voltage RMS value
> S is the slew-rate
> t_jitter is the trigger jitter RMS value
<snip>

That explains it nicely! As you would expect the jitter is much less when a square wave is the input. I will look into the manuals to see the spec and what can be done about it. Measuring it as you suggest will be an interesting project. Maybe it's something that resulted from the long period of inactivity the device had. I will also check the power supplies for voltage accuracy and ripple. 

Thanks again,

Morris VK3DOC
Melbourne, Australia