[time-nuts] Thunderbolt rollover glitch

[Mark Sims]

It looks like it took three hours for the effects of the rollover glitch to 
mostly settle out.

BTW,  if you only use Lady Heather with a Thunderbolt,  you can force the 
rollover state from the command line or heather.cfg file by using the /ro 
command line option.  If you do that you won't have invalid dates for the 10-15 
seconds it takes for Heather's automatic rollover corrector to kick in.   If 
you have /ro in the heather.cfg file and wish to temporarily cancel it to play 
with another receiver that does not have a rollover issue,  you can start 
Heather with /ro=0 ___
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Re: [time-nuts] Machining some aluminum help!

[Clay Autery]

Kerosene as the cutting fluid and use Acetone to clean up the kerosene
afterwards.

__
Clay Autery, KY5G
MONTAC Enterprises
(318) 518-1389

On 7/29/2017 7:57 PM, Scott McGrath wrote:
> Kerosine is a better tap lube for Aluminum as it is more persistent and less 
> flammable
>
> Content by Scott
> Typos by Siri
>

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[time-nuts] Thunderbolt rollover glitch

[Mark Sims]

Attached is a plot of  Thunderbolt data before and after the event.  2 seconds 
after rollover the Thunderbolt reported it was re-initializing the loop filter 
and 4 seconds after the event it reported is was starting to phase lock the 
1PPS.   The DAC jumped 0.023V V which is around 75 mHz of frequency change.  
The 1PPS jumped around 2936 ns.  

It looks like it is going to take a few fours to recover to its pre-rollover 
state.___
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Re: [time-nuts] Machining some aluminum help!

[Scott McGrath]

Kerosine is a better tap lube for Aluminum as it is more persistent and less 
flammable

Content by Scott
Typos by Siri

> On Jul 29, 2017, at 6:41 PM, Joseph Gwinn  wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:00:02 -0400, time-nuts-requ...@febo.com wrote:
>> Send time-nuts mailing list submissions to
>>time-nuts@febo.com
>> 
>> Message: 7
>> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:11:09 -0700
>> From: "Gary E. Miller" 
>> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>>
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Machining some aluminum help!
>> Message-ID: <20170728141109.71aad...@spidey.rellim.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> Yo cdel...@juno.com!
>> 
>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2017 12:46:30 -0700
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> After mounting the tap in the drill
>>> press and putting a dab of Crisco on the tap I was able to tap each
>>> hole to a depth of 7/16" as fast as I could turn the handwheel!
>> 
>> 
>> Cool!
>> 
>> I suggest you get some real cutting fluid.  The threads will be smoother.
> 
> I second that.  What I use is a lubricant wax made by Lenox, the saw 
> maker.  It's intended for metal-cutting band saws, but works just 
> splendid for form taps.  There are many equivalents.
> 
> By the way, when drilling aluminum, use denatured alcohol as the 
> cutting fluid.  This will prevent aluminum gumming up the cutting edge 
> of the drill.
> 
> And, as others have mentioned, one does not use the same size drill for 
> forming taps as for cutting taps.  The diameter accuracy required can 
> only be achieved by using the correct number (versus fractional) drill 
> bit size.  Do not use Chinese drill bits - steel not good enough.  US, 
> Japan, Germany et al are OK.
> 
> Joe Gwinn
> 
> 
>> RGDS
>> GARY
>> ---
>> 
>> End of time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 36
>> **
> ___
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Re: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines the correct date

[CubeCentral]

It happened here too.  It is reporting having the 3.0 firmware.  Right at the 
time Tom said.  Fortunately I am simply using this unit for PPS and nothing 
else.

https://i.imgur.com/sganU3F.png



-Original Message-
From: time-nuts [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2017 18:16
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines the correct 
date

Caught it. Some Trimble Thunderbolt TBoltmon.exe screen shots attached:

GPS WN 1959 TOW 604799 (July 29, 2017 23:59:41) advanced to GPS WN 936 TOW 0 
(December 13, 1997) instead of GPS WN 1960 TOW 0 (July 29, 2017 23:59:42).

1960 - 936 is 1024 weeks, as advertised for this version of the TBolt GPSDO. 
Note this happened at 23:59:42 UTC as expected (that's GPS midnight - 18 UTC 
leap seconds). I did not expect the reported 2.75 us 1PPS phase change and will 
look into that.

/tvb

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Re: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines the correct date

[Tom Van Baak]

Caught it. Some Trimble Thunderbolt TBoltmon.exe screen shots attached:

GPS WN 1959 TOW 604799 (July 29, 2017 23:59:41) advanced to
GPS WN 936 TOW 0 (December 13, 1997) instead of
GPS WN 1960 TOW 0 (July 29, 2017 23:59:42).

1960 - 936 is 1024 weeks, as advertised for this version of the TBolt GPSDO. 
Note this happened at 23:59:42 UTC as expected (that's GPS midnight - 18 UTC 
leap seconds). I did not expect the reported 2.75 us 1PPS phase change and will 
look into that.

/tvb
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Re: [time-nuts] Machining some aluminum help!

[Joseph Gwinn]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:00:02 -0400, time-nuts-requ...@febo.com wrote:
> Send time-nuts mailing list submissions to
>   time-nuts@febo.com
> 
> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:11:09 -0700
> From: "Gary E. Miller" 
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>   
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Machining some aluminum help!
> Message-ID: <20170728141109.71aad...@spidey.rellim.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Yo cdel...@juno.com!
> 
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2017 12:46:30 -0700
>  wrote:
> 
>> After mounting the tap in the drill
>> press and putting a dab of Crisco on the tap I was able to tap each
>> hole to a depth of 7/16" as fast as I could turn the handwheel!
> 
> 
> Cool!
> 
> I suggest you get some real cutting fluid.  The threads will be smoother.

I second that.  What I use is a lubricant wax made by Lenox, the saw 
maker.  It's intended for metal-cutting band saws, but works just 
splendid for form taps.  There are many equivalents.

By the way, when drilling aluminum, use denatured alcohol as the 
cutting fluid.  This will prevent aluminum gumming up the cutting edge 
of the drill.

And, as others have mentioned, one does not use the same size drill for 
forming taps as for cutting taps.  The diameter accuracy required can 
only be achieved by using the correct number (versus fractional) drill 
bit size.  Do not use Chinese drill bits - steel not good enough.  US, 
Japan, Germany et al are OK.

Joe Gwinn

 
> RGDS
> GARY
> ---
> 
> End of time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 36
> **
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Re: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines thecorrect date

[Nick Sayer via time-nuts]

FWIW, the SkyTraq receivers have the notion of a “UTC reference date” which 
allows the 1024 week window to roll forward indefinitely as long as you update 
that value once in a while. I’ve written code in my GPS Clock to update the 
reference date once a year as well as update the default GPS-UTC delta whenever 
it’s wrong (this fixes the “off by 2 seconds for a minute or two” problem). 
This latter issue is an interesting one - If you supply SkyTraq modules with 
backup power, then on *power up* it will copy the GPS-UTC delta to flash, as 
long as the memory of what it was at shut down remains preserved.

The UTC reference date also allows the clock to workaround the Y2K issue in the 
NMEA sentences - you can query the reference date and use a 100 year rolling 
window similarly for that. As long as you power the clock up and give it 
reception at least once every 19 years or so, it should calculate the correct 
date as long as GPS remains available (this only really matters for the clock 
because it’s how DST decisions are made - it doesn’t actually display the date).

I haven’t done this for my GPSDOs because the controller isn’t wired to speak 
to the GPS receiver. But you can use the diagnostic port and SkyTraq’s GNSS 
viewer software to do this if you care to. The only use the GPSDO makes of the 
time/date is time-stamping the logs.

> On Jul 27, 2017, at 7:01 PM, Tom Van Baak  wrote:
> 
>> Well quite an unpleasant surprise. So after the 30th do the TBolts stop
> 
> Paul,
> 
> This topic has been covered a number of times over the years. Some time-nuts 
> have even run TBolt's under GPS simulators to verify that the 10 MHz and 1PPS 
> outputs will be fine. So apparently the only effect is that the date & time 
> (in binary TSIP messages) are off by 1024 weeks. This rollover-related effect 
> is by now a "common" issue with many GPS receivers.
> 
> The current version of Mark's Lady Heather program has code to detect this 
> and fix it so you're good to go for the next 19.6 years.
> 
> /tvb
> 
> - Original Message - 
> From: "paul swed" 
> To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 
> 
> Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 5:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines thecorrect 
> date
> 
> 
>> Well quite an unpleasant surprise. So after the 30th do the TBolts stop
>> working or is it a case of just the wrong date? I know my Hp3801s been
>> working just fine and its old. Is the TBolt the same issue. Wrong date but
>> still locks thats all I care about actually.
>> With to respect of some sort of a hack I can see that being fairly
>> difficult.
>> Regards
>> Paul
>> WB8TSL
> 
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Re: [time-nuts] A look inside the DS3231

[Pete Stephenson]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017, at 09:46 PM, Trent Piepho wrote:
> Looks like it still says "DALLAS SEMICONDUCTOR" to the left of Maxim.
> Maybe Maxim only wanted to change the mask enough to find some empty
> space to sign it?

It does indeed say "DALLAS SEMICONDUCTOR".

I managed to get some high-quality photos using the microscope's
on-board camera and have updated the photo album at
https://imgur.com/a/0zudj with the newest ones (they're the
all-rectangular photos below the two circular photos). There's some
high-resolution composite images.

Some things I found interesting:
- There's a section just above the "Maxim" part that has several
snippets of text ("17A3", "16A3", etc.). In normal light, each of these
bits of text is a different color, where the colors correspond to
different layers of the chip. Each bit of text has a different depth of
focus, indicating they're physically closer or further from the lens.
Does anyone know what material the colors might correspond to?

- There's several square grids of circles-in-squares circuit elements. I
have no idea what these are.

- I find it remarkable that this circuit can operate on less than a
microamp during normal usage, including temperature conversion.

The DS3231 has on-board temperature monitoring to correct the crystal
frequency: is this something where they would have bothered putting a
separate sensor next to the crystal itself, or are the die and the
crystal are close enough and in the same package that they could use an
on-die sensor like a diode and call that "good enough"?

Cheers!
-Pete

-- 
Pete Stephenson
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[time-nuts] Symmetricom X99 rubidium oscillator

[Mark Sims]

Does anybody have a manual for the X99?

BTW,  a few days ago the Symmetricom web site was still active.  It now 
re-directs to Microsemi.   It looks like what meagre information was available 
is no longer available...
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Re: [time-nuts] A look inside the DS3231

[Trent Piepho]

Looks like it still says "DALLAS SEMICONDUCTOR" to the left of Maxim.
Maybe Maxim only wanted to change the mask enough to find some empty
space to sign it?

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 12:31 PM, Pete Stephenson  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A few days ago I reported the results from letting a DS3231 RTC run for
> a year, and how the chip kept time well within the published specs.
>
> Since I had acquired several DS3231s from dubious sources (Asian vendors
> on a major auction site) as part of an RTC module that fits on the
> Raspberry Pi's header pins, I was doubtful of the authenticity of the
> chips. I decided to sacrifice one in the name of science and decapped it
> at home using alternating heat (a lighter) and cold (a glass of cold
> water) to embrittle the epoxy casing, then sanded down the back of the
> chip on fine-grain sandpaper to expose what I hoped was the back of the
> internals (so as not to damage the die itself).
>
> Other than inadvertently sanding through half of the crystal's housing,
> thus breaking one of the forks of the crystal, this was a success. (I
> was prepared to decap one in acid had my attempt at physically removing
> the epoxy package failed.) I slightly scratched the die itself while
> separating it from the epoxy, but the die itself is clearly visible.
> Based on a sample size of one and the markings on the die itself, it
> appears the chip is authentic. The markings on the outside of the epoxy
> package look a bit dubious and not like typical Maxim laser-markings, so
> it's possible the chip was re-labeled at some point. I'll contact Maxim
> to see if they can look up the lot information.
>
> I used my 2 megapixel USB microscope to take some images throughout the
> process that you might find interesting. The microscope has limited
> resolution, particularly at high magnification, so some of the photos
> may not be perfectly clear. I have access to a Zeiss petrographic
> microscope at my work and will see if I can get some better images
> tomorrow. I'll try to get high-quality images of the whole chip and
> stitch them together into a larger composite.
>
> Anyway, the photos are available at http://imgur.com/a/0zudj -- I will
> add more photos from the petrographic microscope tomorrow. I focused
> mainly on the markings on the die that indicated it was, in fact, a
> Maxim chip but if there's any other region of the chip that you'd like
> images of, please let me know and I'd be happy to take some more
> pictures.
>
> I hope you find this as interesting as I did.
>
> Cheers!
> -Pete
>
> --
> Pete Stephenson
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[time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines thecorrect date

[ed briggs]

The current model Thunderbolt E #60333-50, v1.04 firmware has a 
last valid date on the 22nd December 2029.

It is probably  a good idea to specify what firmware you  have in these 
discussions as different versions will have different properties, and some of 
the used Thunderbolts are quite old.



On Jul 28, 2017, at 9:05 AM, 
"time-nuts-requ...@febo.com" 
> wrote:

Send time-nuts mailing list submissions to
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Today's Topics:

  1. Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines thecorrectdate
 (Mark Sims)
  2. Symmetricom X72 and Lady Heather results (Mark Sims)


--

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 02:32:44 +
From: Mark Sims >
To: "time-nuts@febo.com" 
>
Subject: [time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines
   thecorrectdate
Message-ID:
   
>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Actually,  Lady Heather's rollover compensation code has no limit on the 
correction.  It can compensate for any number of rollovers.   In fact you can 
use it to adjust the receiver time by any number of seconds (including 
fractional seconds).

The default behavior is to trigger after 10 seconds of consecutive time 
messages where the time is before year 2016.  The 10 second filter is to avoid 
false triggers from corrupted packets.   This means that for the first 10 
seconds after starting Heather on a Tbolt,  the date will be wrong.  When 
rollover compensation is in effect, the date is shown in yellow and a "ro" flag 
appears next to it.   It would nice if somebody could come up with a patched 
firmware...

You can get a false rollover detection if you start monitoring a receiver 
before it has acquired the almanac since most receivers output time based upon 
the GPS epoch if they don't have an almanac.



The current version of Mark's Lady Heather program has code to detect this and 
fix it so you're good to go for the next 19.6 years.

--

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 01:27:07 +
From: Mark Sims >
To: "time-nuts@febo.com" 
>
Subject: [time-nuts] Symmetricom X72 and Lady Heather results
Message-ID:
   
>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I'm in the process of adding support to Lady Heather for the Symmetricom X72 
(and SA22) rubidium oscillators.  I have a most of the functionality working.  
The X72 has a "health" message that dumps a couple dozen values.  The values 
are labeled with some rather cryptic names that give some hint about what they 
are,  but no where in their (miserable) documentation do they elaborate on what 
the values mean.   Does anybody have any info on them.

The X72 is user interface is a very frustrating an infuriating thing to work 
with.   The device has several glaring omissions in what it does...  like no 
way to read back any settings that you have made and no way to save most of 
them in EEPROM and no command to restore the unit to its factory default state.

Attached is a plot showing most of the non-static health values... it looks 
like most of them are highly correlated with temperature.  Without heavily 
average-filtering the display,  the values look a lot like noise.
-- next part --
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Subject: Digest Footer

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End of time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 34
**

Re: [time-nuts] time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 35 (5065A Pwr Xfmr - Too high output voltage)

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <1826314051.766978.1501316001...@mail.yahoo.com>, Ulf Kylenfall via 
time-nuts writes:

>That was a brilliant idea...
>...until I realized that I needed 115V for the XO quick-heaterand
>we use 230V in Europe...

The quick-heater isn't that important, unless you are a very impatient
person.

It is also, as I understand it, the primary reason for fried out
OCXOs...

See also:

http://phk.freebsd.dk/hacks/HP5065A/20150925_ocxo_preheat/index.html


-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer   | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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Re: [time-nuts] time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 35 (5065A Pwr Xfmr - Too high output voltage)

[Ulf Kylenfall via time-nuts]

Yepp. 
That was a brilliant idea...
...until I realized that I needed 115V for the XO quick-heaterand we use 230V 
in Europe...
So the SMPS splution will not work for me.
I will use an old (dual primary winding) linear supply which has the advantage 
of providinga regulated 24V that can be used for the heater windings of the 
rubidiumcavity.
Ulf - SM6GXV


  From: "time-nuts-requ...@febo.com" 
 To: time-nuts@febo.com 
 Sent: Friday, July 28, 2017 6:00 PM
 Subject: time-nuts Digest, Vol 156, Issue 35
   
Send time-nuts mailing list submissions to
    time-nuts@febo.com

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
    https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
    time-nuts-requ...@febo.com

You can reach the person managing the list at
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: 5065A - Looking for AC XFMR PAECO 9100-2742    specification
      (paul swed)


--

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 11:21:51 -0400
From: paul swed 
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
    
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] 5065A - Looking for AC XFMR PAECO 9100-2742
    specification
Message-ID:
    
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Poul
I looked at your site and the power supply. That makes a lot of sense.
Though I have not lost my transformer as Ulf has at least I see an answer
that I can use. I would have come up with the same approach but you did the
thinking for me.
Thanks
Paul
WB8TSL

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp 
wrote:

> 
> In message <675538475.428966.1501176257...@mail.yahoo.com>, Ulf Kylenfall
> via t
> ime-nuts writes:
>
> >Removing that board I discovered that the "24-32V" raw DC was some
> >40 Volts.
>
> That's a bit on the high side, but not excessively so.
>
> HP tended to let the linear regulators shave a big slice in
> precision instruments, probably to make sure that absolutely
> no ripple makes it through.
>
> If I were you, I would ditch the transformer entirely, and go with
> an external DC PSU and put a high-quality DC/DC converter in the
> HP5065A
>
> See:
>
>        http://phk.freebsd.dk/hacks/HP5065A/20150930_dcdc/index.html
>
>
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> p...@freebsd.org        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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> mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
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**


   
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