[time-nuts] 53131A or 5370B

Jeff Mock jeff at mock.com
Sun Nov 11 02:04:48 EST 2007


Bernd T-Online wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> Tom Clark, K3IO wrote:
>>    I have been a strong advocate for the 53131/2 counter since I first
>>    encountered in in 1993. Most of my applications are for a time-interval
>>    counter (TIC) measuring the time interval between an atomic clock and
>>    GPS (see my Timing for VLBI papers at [1]http://gpstime.com). The two
>>    reasons are
>>     1. It is simple and cheap and reliable, especially for the casual
>>        user.
>>     2. It has a simple RS-232 "printer" interface that is really easy to
>>        use. Rick Hambly used the 53131/2 simple interface to make his
>>        Tac32Plus (and Multi) software packages into an integrated TIC
>>        logging utility 
> 
> My question: is there a penalty in timing, if the GPIB bus is used for 
> time interval measurement as compared to the RS-232 bus.
> This question may sound stupid, as I am do not write the test software 
> in our lab by myself, but get it done.
> 

I have a 53132A, I've written code for both the GPIB and RS-232 
interfaces at various times.  The performance is about the same, I never 
noticed that one interface is faster than the other.  The performance is 
probably more driven by the pea-brained microcontroller in the box.

The 53131/2 are pretty well behaved boxes, I found them to be very 
reliable and easy program without too much fiddling.  Sometimes GPIB 
equipment can be pretty badly behaved, but the 53132A is great.

jeff





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