[time-nuts] Z3815A pinout

Mark C. Stephens marks at non-stop.com.au
Thu Jun 6 01:07:10 EDT 2013


Bob, I am shocked! Are you Trolling?!

To Quote Stuart Cobb, posted to this very list on 29th May, 2013:
>>>> The Z3815A I got from China was in a different case, just two bent pieces 
>>>> of sheet aluminum.  The case _looks_ official, with the right label on the 
>>>> front and silkscreen on the back.  But the board inside had a lot more 
>>>> crud and corrosion than the nice clean case did, and parts of the plastic 
>>>> edge connector on the back of the board were broken.  Worst of all, the 
>>>> coaxial cable from the antenna connector ended in a one-inch flying lead 
>>>> soldered to the board.  The "shield" of the coax cable ended in another 
>>>> flying lead, soldered to ground somewhere else.  (Any RF engineers reading 
>>>> this are probably cringing now.)  I'm pretty sure that no one at HP 
>>>> designed or approved that connection.  Once I saw it, I understood why the 
>>>> GPS receiver appeared to be "deaf."  Even connected to a very good 
>>>> antenna, it never saw more than 4 satellites, and even those had weak 
>>>> signals.

-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On Behalf Of Bob Camp
Sent: Thursday, 6 June 2013 12:10 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Z3815A pinout

Hi

Well if the Z3815 boxes are all fakes, they did a *really* good job on making up all the HP logo's and HP stickers. They even faked the right date codes for the add on stickers. They also did a very nice job with the custom cables that plug directly into everything. 

Bob 

On Jun 5, 2013, at 6:15 PM, Mark C. Stephens <marks at non-stop.com.au> wrote:

> Magnus, Just plug 18-60V into P10 (next to the GPS), Supposedly the input power is steered by diodes so it is polarity insensitive.
> Anyway, It's a standard connector, I am sure you have tons of them, On mine, Pin 1 is wired to negative, Pin 2 to positive.
> Pin2 is closest to the left edge looking from the front.
> 
> Gently cut the white multi coax plastic connector shell off at the back and the coax connectors just pull out.
> Can do a seamless job with very little patience.
> 
> You can fit certain SMB connectors as replacement.
> Failing that, solder your GPS antenna feed centre conductor into b2, shield can go in a1,a3,c1,c3.
> 
> As a sidenote, I have seen inside those nice Z3815A boxes.
> They are fakes. I know for fact they make the box in china and put an 
> old module in it :) If you have one of these fake ones, your Antenna Coax will have about an inch of unexposed coax and the ground tacked in the wrong place resulting in your GPS being as deaf as a post.
> 
> There are also 2 SMB on the Z3815A board itself of note supplying 1PPS and 10Mhz un-buffered.
> 
> Back to the rear where you have removed the connector, 3 buffered 10Mhz outputs are on d5,d8,d11 grounds are c4-12 and e4-12.
> 
> The Z3815A are a really lovely unit, Mine got down to 200ns hold pred. uncertainty within a couple of days.
> Unfortunately I knocked the bench power out last night accidently while trying to reach some coax snagged around something at the back.
> 
> Apparently, Don't touch the current batch on Ebay, they were tested by some chap in Japan and he sold the rejects to Chinese eBay sellers.
> About 50% power on, but have poor performance.
> This is hearsay of course, YMMV..
> 
> 
> -marki
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] 
> On Behalf Of Magnus Danielson
> Sent: Thursday, 6 June 2013 7:23 AM
> To: time-nuts at febo.com
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Z3815A pinout
> 
> On 06/05/2013 11:16 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> There are two very different 3815's out there. One comes in a nice 
>> box with rational connectors on it. (They are expensive). The other 
>> one is the plug in card that always seems to need a good scrub down. 
>> It appears to have the same "stuff" but connecting to it is not easy.
>> These are about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the other ones...
> 
> Yes, the boxed up one just has a box around the same board.
> 
> There are variants with E1938A and those with another oscillator.
> 
> Mine is a plug-in module, and as I was considering if I could hook it into a VXI chassi, I realized that I was lacking that PDF. A propper manual would also be great.
> 
> Cheers,
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com To unsubscribe, go to 
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com To unsubscribe, go to 
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.

_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.




More information about the time-nuts mailing list