Koolertron CJDS98 weirdness - moving to beginners forum.

[Hank30721]

Hey folks…
Long time listener first time caller. I’m an old newbie - I know a little about a lot of things!

I have been given this unit (a rebadged juntek psg9080) from a friend as I’m taking an online course building the Elenco AM/FM kit.  He has only used it for generating waveforms for audio equipment - never used it for modulated waveforms.

The instructions for the kit say to set up the generator for a 1 kHz tone, 455 kHz am modulated carrier, at 80% modulation (depth) and connect it to a test point on the kit through a 0.001uF cap. Then increase the generator’s amplitude (Vpp) until you hear the tone from the radio’s speaker.

On the generator, the modulation setup is on one page and the amplitude adjustment and tone frequency is on another page. My experience is that you have to set the amplitude and then switch back to the modulation menu to get the generator to “trigger”. I switch back to the function screen to adjust the Vpp and the generator stops sending the modulated carrier until I switch back to the modulation page.

Is that right?  Is there another way to do this?  I have used an older Heath RF generator and you could vary the amplitude in real time - you activated the modulated carrier, set the tone frequency and dialed the amplitude up or down. It’s a PITA at this point. The manual sux.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

[Hank30721]

Surely someone has one of these and has used it in a similar fashion.  Am I setting it up wrong is my real question or is the user interface just that crappy.

[Hank30721]

Well..the Koolertron failed today so my problem temporarily has gone away.

I turned it on and the blue power light came on, but no screen.  I turned it off and on again and nothing.  I checked the fuse and it was ok.  It's just dead.

I called my friend who had loaned it to me and he said no problem.  He bought it Amazon and was contacting them for help.  I decided to buy my own unit - after reading here and watching youtube videos, I ordered a Sigilent SDG1032x.  I figure it's a good unit to use as I learn electronics.