Hi,
like a few others, I am experimenting with modifying cheap a LNB to feed it an external reference clock for the local oscillator.
To do this, I removed the 25MHz crystal and fed in an external 25MHz with roughly the same amplitude via an LC bandpass filter, but I can't get it to work. At first, it looks like it works, i.e. the noise floor rises when I connect power, but I don't see any signals.
I found a PDF on the web which served as a template, although my LNB is a bit different and I used SMD components as you can see in the picture.
My problem is, I can't really tell which of the crystal pins is the right one to feed the signal into. As expected, with the original crystal, both have a 25MHz sine wave with slightly different amplitudes (but not as high as in the PDF, mine are only about 250mVpp).
If I feed my 25MHz into the pin which had the higher amplitude with the original crystal, the other pin has no signal on it, where as when I feed into that pin (tha one with the lower amplitude), the other pin has an attenuated signal.
Is is possible, that both pins have to be coupled in some way? Because in the PDF and several other examples I looked at, the unused trace is ignored if the crystal is removed, or cut, if the crystal has been left in place.
EDIT: Actually, now that I think of it, there was one other method I have seen. That one tied the signal in via a BalUn, with the balanced side on the XTAL pins. I couldn't test this method though, because I don't have a small enough toroid to fit in there.
I'm a bit stuck here, so I hope someone here can put me on the right track.
Cheers,
Ali