[time-nuts] Advice on 5370A vs 5370B differences please

Magnus Danielson magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
Sat Aug 29 12:36:04 UTC 2009


swingbyte wrote:
> Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> In message <72C46D68028C463EBDB775EE14FB9578 at LapTop>, "Roy Phillips" 
>> writes:
>>  
>>> Tim
>>> I have recently acquired a 5370B and find your comments of interest. 
>>> So in addition, what was the intention of designing the mother-board 
>>> to have no less than three additional (and in my case,unused) pcb 
>>> slots following the uP and Display interface, marked ROM, 
>>> MEM(optional) and SERVICE(AID)
>>>     
>>
>> The backplane is the same as in the 5370A.
>>
>> The SERVICE AID is mentioned in the manual, amongst other things it has
>> two D/A converters so you can watch the address bus on a X/Y scope.
>>
>> The optional MEM I have not found any references to, but the 5370A might
>> have its ram there.
>>
>>   
> According to the manual, the 5370A has its ram on a separate card.  I 
> think these units use a bit of power - this might explain the heat.  I'm 
> none to sure as to how useful the service aid would be.  I remember a 
> project in a mag about these back in the '80s and suspect that like the 
> signature analyser, they were experiments in digital circuit 
> troubleshooting.  I haven't seen the technique used extensively.  ( at 
> all ).  It is a bit like a real time software profiler - I have seen it 
> used but the usefulness was not too great.

HP had an interesting signature based analysis instrument series (I have 
one of them) and it was used in a series of instruments if you look in 
the manuals. I think it is an interesting approach to fault analysis, 
but it certainly not eliminate the traditional schematics and descriptions.

Fluke also made DMMs with the same signature analysis technique built 
in. I gave those away as I thought I had what I needed.

Cheers,
Magnus



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