[time-nuts] Favorite counters (current production)?

[Magnus Danielson]

Hi,

On 11/11/2017 01:44 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:
>> A trouble with some of these modern counters is that sometimes their
>> processing isn't as transparent as it used to be. The trouble with that
> 
> I agree 100%. They get "too clever" for their own good and the internal design is not released. This is one reason why the TAPR TICC is so welcome. Totally open h/w and s/w. Ok, it doesn't quite compete with 20 ps full-featured high-end counters, but it's also 10x cheaper.

This is a common problem to the researchers and the time-nuts.
We can hope that the vendors reading this take notice about these needs.

> That said, I want to point out that the latest GPSDO / counter from Stanford Research continues their tradition of relatively open design. If you have an hour, go through the very detailed user manual, which includes theory of operation and BOM and schematics, just like the old days:
> 
> http://www.thinksrs.com/downloads/PDFs/Manuals/FS740m.pdf
> http://www.thinksrs.com/downloads/PDFs/Catalog/FS740c.pdf
> 
> It's rather understated: they call it a "GPS time and frequency system" but it does frequency synthesis and pulse generation, frequency counting and time tagging, stats including ADEV, etc. You can see how they combined pieces of several other products all into this one modern instrument. Perhaps there's no need for them to ever refresh the SR620 now that the FS740 exists.

Many thanks for this one, I did not know about this one, but look very 
interesting.

>> That said, I hope Keysight can straight it out. I'm not out to bash
>> them, but I'm not as excited about their products as I was back in the
>> HP and early Agilent days.
> 
> Right. That's also why I mentioned that if someday there's a Keysight B version of the 53230 I'm all in. Surely someone at Keysight is looking into this. They just need someone with a time nut mentality to clear up all the loose ends. Meanwhile the FS740 is on my Christmas list.

Exactly my view. That we comment on it here, is since we learn and need 
to track it. Hopefully they learn from this.

Vendors have become better at interacting again.

In the meanwhile, I hope Santa has a nice FS740 for me under the 
christmas tree. Need to be nice now for a the rest of the year.

Cheers,
Magnus