[time-nuts] Datum/Symmetricom Tymserve TS2100 GPS NTP Server Questions

Raoul Duke raoulduke_esq at yahoo.com
Sat Oct 21 00:54:37 UTC 2017


Hi, I've been running an NTP server on my local network based on a TS2100.  It works great, even though it is a bit slow at 10Mbps.  However, last week it just crapped out on me, lost track of all satellites, and began drifting.  I have a spare, but it too can not receive any signals.  The antenna is good because I also have a Spectracom GPS9183* running off the same antenna through a 58535A splitter.  And I have swapped splitter ports with no change.  The two TS2100s are running firmware versions 2.78 and 3.1, respectively.  (After sitting for a few days, the v2.78 has sprung back to life but I am suspicious of its longterm reliability.)

So I opened the second TS2100, expecting to find a bad power supply.  The Astec LPT42 is fine, and all 3 voltages are well within spec. The GPS receiver board appears to be a Trimble SVeeSix-CM3 identified by part number 25040 and is the correct size.  Judging from other time-nuts posts and web searches, this must be a really old TS2100 based off the older 9390-6000.  I see that the ACE II/ACE III were installed in (later) TS2100's.  As the ACEs had that week counter overflow problem, and they seem pretty rare these days, I was looking at the Heol Design replacement N024.  I saw that early reports here were a no-go on the N024 installed into a TS2100 but there is a V2 version.

So I have some questions:
(1) My TS2100 v2.78 has no problem with the GPS 1995/1024 week counter problem.  Has it been patched?  Or is this because the older SVeeSix-CM3 does not have the same problem as the ACE II/III?
(2) My TS2100 v3.1 comes up cold as 1 Jan 2008, which seems fairly recent.  Is this a sign of a patch?
(3) Heol's site seems to indicate that their N024 V2 is the solution, but they are now $300?  Ouch.  Is this still the price?  All of the Heol threads here seem to have ended 2 years ago.

(4) Should I upgrade my TS2100s to v4.1 firmware?  That v2.78 web page sure is spartan.

(5) My TS2100s seem to be simple XO versions.  I noticed that the main board has a huge space for different oscillators.  I have a few Symmetricom P/N 159-00003-000 (UCCM P 090-03861-03) 10 MHz OXOs that I would like to swap in place of the XO.  Does anyone have any information on the TS2100 mainboard oscillator mounting holes and possible strapping options that would make this possible?
Thanks for any help.

* The Spectracom 9183 network IF seems to be running at 100Mbps so it has a much shorter latency, but it appears to have much more jitter than the older TS2100, so NTPD always relegates it to "candidate" and the TS2100 as active peer.



More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com mailing list