[time-nuts] Oscilloquartz 3210 Cesium Standard

bownes bownes at gmail.com
Thu Aug 28 10:39:41 EDT 2014


Careful Chris, it sounds like you are developing the symptoms of the Vintage strain of the time nuts infection. Next thing you know, you will be looking at tall clocks. 

Bob, who is debating the wisdom of non invasively synchronizing the family heirloom tall clock to the new cesium clock...

> On Aug 28, 2014, at 10:33, Chris <syseng.greenfield at btconnect.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 08/28/14 05:03, Javier Herrero wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Here is the manual I've. I have also some other documentations, and some
>> Oscilloquartz software for the OSA-5585, but I don't know if they are
>> very useful.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Javier
> 
> Hi Javier,
> 
> Thanks for that and for the other replies. The 3210 looks like quite an early design, with no sign of microprocessors at all. There's a 8 slot card cage with a load of discrete analog circuitry, 741 op amps etc and a couple of boards full of 14 / 16 pin ssi cmos / ttl devices, which I guess would be the synthesiser logic and perhaps a state machine style startup sequencer. Apart from that, the rest is power supply related and what looks like an alarm board with optoisolator discete outputs to a 25 way D connector. The step recovery diode (?) multiplier into the microwave cavity is a really neat gold plated assembly with what looks like a 50r termination (setup tap for spectrum analyser ?) and an adjustment trimmer, but am not touching that or the many trimpots on the boards or any adjustments until I have more info. The tube is from FTS, part number / model 7101.
> 
> It seems strange that the 2nd harmonic, meter #9, is zero, since even with a tube approaching eol, one would expect at least some indication, which is why I think there may be an electronic fault. Perhaps the hv power supply module feeding the electron multiplier. Will try to measure that, but the area around the tube is really heavily rivetted and screwed down in all directions. Looks like a lot of the left hand side of the case will need to be disassembled just to get at the tube connections. It also had the battery backup option, with 4 sets of 3 x cyclon type cells, but with a date code of 1984, are seriously dead and have been removed.
> 
> This time nuts things seems to be a growing interest and wonder if there is a cure ? :-). Recently bought a 1970's era Tracor 304D rubidium standard. Again, no lock, but a very well engineered and screwed together piece of kit and should be fixable. Collection now includes the Z3816, from Ebay US around 7 years ago, a Z3815 currently being repackaged, an HP103 with open circuit oven heater elements and the 3210...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
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