[time-nuts] HP 5372A advice

Magnus Danielson magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
Wed Jan 20 14:38:50 EST 2016


Hi Morris,

On 01/20/2016 09:59 AM, Morris Odell wrote:
> Thanks very much for your reply Magnus,
>
>> I strongly advice you to download the manuals. It is an instrument that
>> is puzzling at times, so the manuals are needed. The upside is that they
>> are really interesting. The operators and programming manuals get you
>> understand what it really does. You also want the service manual.
>> Anyway, last time I looked I could download them from Agilent/Keysight.
>
> I have downloaded what's there, unfortunately there's no operator's manual but I did the "Getting Started Guide" with the instrument. The prog manual might stimulate me to get GPIB up and running.

See the other link. The trick is to search for "5372A" and not for 
"HP5372A".

>> Trigger jitter. More importantly, now you see it!
>> The trigger jitter follows the formula:
>
>> t_jitter = e_n / S
>
>> e_n is the noise voltage RMS value
>> S is the slew-rate
>> t_jitter is the trigger jitter RMS value
> <snip>
>
> That explains it nicely! As you would expect the jitter is much less when a square wave is the input.

Great!

> I will look into the manuals to see the spec and what can be done about it. Measuring it as you suggest will be an interesting project.

Hint: Check the Numeric presentation and see the standard deviation, 
which will work as you collect blocks of samples, let's say 8000.

> Maybe it's something that resulted from the long period of inactivity the device had. I will also check the power supplies for voltage accuracy and ripple.

Well, do the check.

Figure out how you can make the HP5372A to calculate the slew-rate for 
you. Voltage divided by time is the hint. :)
With that, you can measure slew-rate and jitter (standard deviation) of 
the different signals. You can then experiment with amplitude and frequency.

73 de SA0MAD Magnus


More information about the time-nuts mailing list