Products > Test Equipment
Kontron/Tabor 6010 universal counter still worth getting?
0xdeadbeef:
Yeah, this is what I expected to see for the TCXO option :(
But then again, you don't have the GHz input board :)
Good thing is that I convinced the seller that he's wrong in the meantime. So I will get a refund this way or the other (either send it back or keep it and get some money back).
I mean it's not totally unusable even with the 5ppm oscillator. I could calibrate it to a few LSDs (i.e. the 9th digit changes driftes counts up and down) and I can't tell if the drift comes from the oscillator or the GPSDO.
While we're at it: did you ever try to jumper the 10MHz output to input? I wonder if it will need the 10MHz reference input all the time then or automatically detects its presence and switches from the internal timebase to the external if there is a signal connected.
Ash:
Yes, the channel C input is a little bit of a lesson for me :palm:
I assumed it had it because the connector was there, but it wasn't. That in in line with the manual, and the seller didn't say it was fitted when I bought it on eBay. But no matter I got it reasonably cheaply because there was an error with the unit where it wouldn't read correctly. Turned out the PLL that takes the 10MHz and converts to 500MHz (on the 6030, not sure about the 6010) was broken - the first divider was dead. I was able to source a replacement and was all good. I also took the precaution of replacing the electrolytics..
As for the External/Internal switching, I'm not sure about the 6010, but if the 6030 is anything to go my, it is a manual switch - you need to move jumpers around inside the instrument. These are located on the left side of the module.. There is no auto switching ::) In my case the instrument runs at 500MHz derived from a PLL, so the external 10Mhz would have to be constant..
On my long list of "projects to do when I get a chance" is to break out the jumpers to either a small relay daughter board or even add a toggle switch on the back.. :-// marginal at 10MHz tho.
I also intend to make or re-purpose a divider board to bring the C channel up. I'm reasonably sure there is the ability to go to higher frequencies as some of the pins to the daughter board set the divide ratio so the firmware can correctly display the frequency. the 6030 is labelled at 2.4GHz..
If you have a GPSDO, just setup as an input, and you will be more accurate than me :)
I don't know what the differences are between the models, but if they share common hardware, I have a copy of the 6030 EPROM if you want to play with it..
Ash.
0xdeadbeef:
I already have a cheap Chinese GPSDO and used it to calibrate the 5PPM oscillator. However I somewhat dislike the idea of using a GPSDO as (permanent) time base for the counter.
My idea is to create a small PCB with an 10MHZ OCXO plus trimmer, voltage supply and the like and either mount it internally or to the external input (after using the jumper to configure it).
Maybe I could even use the internal jumper J4 to supply the PCB.
Anyway, I understand that if I had the TCXO option (1), the external reference could be 1MHz, 5MHz or 10MHu but without it, only 10MHz is possible (since the PLL 74HCT4046 is on the TCXO board).
One drawback of this solution compared to the TCXO board is that I won't have the 10x multiplier. With it, the counter is 10 times faster (8 digits per second instead of 7) and the maximum frequency for reciprocal counting is increased to 100MHz. Well, theoretically, I guess I could try to figure out the pinning of J4, create the 100MHZ signal and apply it to the correct pin but I'm not sure if this is worth it.
About the EEPROM: I think the 6030 has higher specs so I doubt using the 6030 SW in a 6010 would do any good even though the HW looks very similar.
Ash:
I downloaded the manual for the 6010 (available on the Tabor site), and looked at the pin-out of the connector, its all documented.
If you had a modern 100MHz TCXO (quick digikey search showed some 1ppm versions).. and buffered that you then feed 100MHz into the right pin onto the unit. There are 2 "sense" lines on the header used by the firmware to detect the option and adapt I guess. These are shown in the schematic for the option in the manual.
I'd be betting that it would all work fine, but you would have to disable the existing 10Mhz reference first. That should be as simple as pulling both the int/ext jumpers so there is no connection at all. This will leave the output driver active in one logic state, but this is capacitively coupled to the same line as the 100Mhz input from the TCXO option so hopefully shouldn't be a big issue.
You could probably test by just jumpering the right pins on the header so the firmware detects the option, but leave the 10MHz ref alone, the counter should then be reading 10x high.. If that happens, building your own 100Mhz TCXO should be straight forward. Looks like if you jumper pin 2 (OPT0) to pin 1 (ground) is all you need to do, pin 4 (OPT1) is left floating according to the schematic.
The manual does state that the options are field installable with no software changes needed. And section 5-2 details it.. however it says to pull U58, and the links LK1a/b, but I can't find U58, I'm guessing that they mean U57 which is the 10Mhz reference. Is that socketed?
Anyway - have a look over the manual and schematics etc, and I think you'll see it should be pretty straight forward to upgrade the unit. There is plenty of room inside to mount a TCXO board, or even a OCXO.. however if you have a 10Mhz you'll need to PLL up to 100Mhz. Like I suggested above it may be better to just go straight to a modern 100MHz osc. Guess it depends on how far you want to go. you could do a PLL and have some internal/external reference switching on the board as well.
Ash.
0xdeadbeef:
Wow, thanks, how could I overlook the schematics in the manual? I actually searched for the Jumper 4 layout in the manual but didn't consider that the schematics were only graphics.
Anyway, I tend to think that the manual mixes up U56 and U58. While U58 is used in the analog output option, U56 is the 74F132 (Quad 2-input NAND Schmitt trigger) used in the 5ppm Oscillator. It's socketed as all the other ICs and I guess it would make perfect sense that the 5ppm oscillator isn't connected to the device anymore if it's removed.
I originally planned to use one of the 10MHz OCXOs I bought some time ago and I guess I could build some PLL circuit to crank it up to 100Mhz.
The benefit of this approach would be that I could also still use an external 10MHz (keeping the 10x multiplier) reference with an internal jumper.
But it's certainly much easier to try to get a 100Mhz TCXO (or OCXO) with <=1ppm.
Now this really looks like it could be a piece of cake to build myself a fake option 1...
[EDIT]
On a 2nd thought, I guess using some off-the-shelf clock multiplier like the IDT ICS601M-01 I could actually re-use my 10MHz OCXO and keep the possibility to use an external 10MHz Reference.
https://www.idt.com/document/dst/601-01-datasheet
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