[time-nuts] Trak 8810 Station Clock

[Tom Van Baak]

Chris,

I'll post photos of my Trak 8810 if it will help with your restoration. 
Yes, it contains a Magnivox MX 4200 OEM GPS receiver with serial 
interface and 1PPS via SMA connector.

I fired up the 8810 for the first time since maybe the late 1990's and 
after about 20 minutes it's tracking 6 SV, 13 SV visible, with good 
looking lat / lon / alt. I'm not sure it's fully locked yet, but the 
fact that it powers up and receives GPS is pretty cool. The blue EL 
backlit LCD is weak but readable.

The FW version is 01.1, HC05 version 03-26-1991, 80188 version 
12-14-1992. A nice old one.

For all of you wondering, the F-connector antenna input is for a 
standard 5 V GPS antenna. I'm using a Trimble Bullet antenna.

I'll look to see if I have a 8810 manual; I do have one for the Trak 
8812. For those of you relatively new to the group, Trak was a fine GPS 
& time & frequency equipment maker from way back. To this day you'll see 
national timing labs with gear made by Trak.

/tvb


On 7/20/2019 9:30 AM, Chris Quayle wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Bought one of the above gps clocks at a radio rally last
> Sunday. Looked ok on the outside, but severe corrosion
> from a leaked backup battery inside. Cleaned all that up,
> replaced some caps and a few other parts on the psu board
> and now at least partially working. All the menus seem to
> work, no signal or power failures, leds blinking 1pps on
> the main board and all rear panel outputs seem ok.
>
> Problem is that the gps engine fails to initialise in post.
> Can't find any reference for this model on the web.
> Did find an 8820 manual, but that has a different mainboard
> and the serial port command set doesn't work on the 8810,
> though characters are echo'd.
>
> This looks like very early gps module and no info on the
> web for it. Read one page that suggests that this module
> might be similar to the Magnavox MX4200 and perhaps a
> connection to Truetime ?, but no other info found.
>
> The board says "Magnavox GPS Engine", with a part number
> label 900578-803-3. Data codes on the devices are 1990-1992,
> so must be a very early model. Question is, are there any
> later gps modules compatable with this device in terms of
> command set, or perhaps a known working board for sale, or
> a manual somewhere ?. There's a neat output board that takes
> a 10 Mz input, to provide 4 of each 1, 5  and 10Mhz sine
> wave outputs on the back panel, useful in itself, but it
> would be good to have this working, to add to the collection.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
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