[time-nuts] z3801a - serial help and for sale.

[David Andersen]

I'm throwing my hands up in the air - I don't have the time to wrestle my
silly mac into trying to talk to the box, unless someone has quick advice
on something I might be doing wrong.

z3801a, jumpered to RS232, modified with an internal switching power supply
(see photos below).  Power light comes on, unit is outputting stable
10MHz.  Doesn't GPS lock, but that makes sense, since I haven't been able
to issue a SURVEY command and I don't live where I used to.

The internal green status light is blinking (as normal), suggesting that
it's probably happy and I'm an idiot for not being able to make it work,
but I don't vouch for anything about it past the 10mhz being there.  The
double-oven oscillator is clearly happy given the 10mhz (compared against a
working Thunderbolt).

Hooked up a serial cable at 19200, 7, O, 1, but only got a garbled little
prompt back - no response to standard z3801a commands.  I *think* I have
the cable configured properly.  I opened it up and checked the RS232
jumpers and they're correct.

I'm open to advice on getting the serial working under my Mac or Linux, or
anyone who wants to relieve me of the burden of z3801a ownership and take a
risk that it's a fixer-upper. :-)  I suspect that in some previous life, I
switched it over into a binary mode of some sort while using it to sync
something, but I can't for the life of me remember what I might have done.

Some reasonable price plus shipping and it's all yours... I'm trying to
de-clutter in preparation for a sabbatical on the other side of the country.

Pictures:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ursszjgie8m1xj8/2015-06-09%2011.57.16.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/it8d2f65ztn4rkq/2015-06-09%2011.57.24.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1p1g6xrapzdmvzh/2015-06-09%2011.59.56.jpg?dl=0

Thanks!

  -Dave