[time-nuts] DIY Goodness

Bruce Lane kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com
Wed Dec 23 22:51:24 UTC 2009


Fellow clock-tickers,

	I just turned one of my spare TCG/Translator units into a nice GPS
clock.

	How did I do this, you may well ask? Well, honestly, I cheated a bit.
When I was cleaning up in the garage earlier this month, I came across an
item I'd bought for cheap last summer from Outback Technologies.
Specifically, a W. Clark and Associates (now Masterclock) GPS-200 time
code generator. It's a small board (about 4" by 6"), and its sole purpose
in life is to listen to the GPS birds and spit out either SMPTE or
modulated IRIG-B time code depending on how you set its DIP switch pack.

	My spare TCG was an old TrueTime 900, purchased from Boeing Surplus
about 4 years ago. Once I pulled the GPS-200 out of its aluminum box, and
desoldered a couple of protruding parts (mainly the D-sub 9 connector and
status LED), the whole board fit nicely into the 900's enclosure (with
the aid of a bit of Velcro tape).

	There were more than enough spare holes on the back to, with a bit of
drilling out, support the antenna connector, a panel-mount LED to replace
the board-mounted one, and a switch to select either the GPS or the
external connector for a code source.

	Mount the receiver board, give it 5V from the 900's internal supply, and
wire its output to my switch. Vyola! GPS-locked clock/IRIG generator.

	I consider it to have been a very productive use of my time(code). ;-)

	Happy tweaking.


Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies
(http://www.bluefeathertech.com)
Assoc. member, IMATA, AZA & AAZK for many moons.
"Salvadore Dali's computer has surreal ports..."




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