[time-nuts] Have I wrecked my FE-5680A?

[Clint Jay]

They use a WSI/ST chip, the PSD813 which is a system chip, it contains
Flash ROM, RAM and peripherals, it's programmed via JTAG.

I'm very interested in obtaining either boards from or complete faulty
units as I believe there's a possibility that these units are configured
with various options being enabled or disabled in EEPROM.

I have a dump of the contents from one device, I'd like more to compare,
preferably from several  'known' configurations.

My original question to Nick was me wondering if he had somehow corrupted
or altered the configuration of the device (it's still possible that he has
and 'all' it needs is a reset to defaults)

Quite how this would be achieved and if it would erase factory programmed
characterisations is an entirely different matter.

On 29 April 2016 at 15:05, Chuck Harris <cfharris at erols.com> wrote:

> Likely what is happening is you are overrunning the RS232
> interrupt buffer, and that is causing a write into code
> space.  Odd that the firmware is changing, though.
>
> Does this thing have Flash RAM, or battery backed NVRAM (Dallas)?
>
> Oftentimes, NVRAM using devices use the NVRAM for both firmware,
> and data RAM space.  Things can get really ugly when that is done.
>
> Also, to test my guess, put a delay between each character
> sent to the FE-5680A.  Say, 2 or 3 ms.
>
> Needless to say before you do this, you need to develop a way
> of restoring the firmware.
>
> -Chuck Harris
>
>
> Bert Kehren via time-nuts wrote:
>
>> Sadly yes
>> The reason we have not released our GPSDO for the FE5690/50 and FE405 is
>> that we have experienced the same on all three devices. You are the 9th
>> case
>> that I know of. We know very little as to what exactly causes it but we
>> are
>>   incorporating circuitry to prevent it. What we know is that it is not a
>> particular code sequence on the RS232 port, but what happens the operating
>> code  is turning to mush. Some how the RS port is involved. Serious flaw
>> on
>> all  FE devices since most likely the code was written by the same
>> individual.
>> Bert Kehren
>>
>>
>> In a message dated 4/28/2016 9:02:28 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> time-nuts at febo.com writes:
>>
>> Just as I  started testing the GPS discipline board prototype, my FE-5680A
>> seems to have  developed a very odd problem.
>>
>> If I give it power, it outputs a “kinda”  10 MHz sine wave while it sweeps
>> around looking for a physics lock. This is as  expected.
>>
>> About the time that I would expect the lock light to turn on,  instead the
>> output just stops. The lock light never comes on.
>>
>> This  unit’s been working fine for months now. It’s conceivable that I’ve
>> sent it  some sort of serial command it couldn’t digest, but using the
>> Windows  calibrator software seems to work - albeit there not being any
>> output
>> from the  oscillator at  all.
>>
>>
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-- 
Clint.

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