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Re: OT Weinschel/Aeroflex 8310 programmable attenuator
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýHi Jim, ? I somewhat agree with you regarding the quality of the attenuator modules. I'm used to HP11713 A or Agilent 11713C controllers and 18GHz attenuators that go with them...it's not the same kind of design. But it also depends on the application. Here is the result of a test on a 50dB switching: My Spectrum is in a max resBW of 8 MHz, in zero span, and I obtain a switching response of 550ns for a level almost 0.5dB from the final value , and 1us for a value close to 0.1dB. So, this attenuator is very interesting for speed, but less for precision and stability. In addition, its frequency response is not constant depending on the attenuation value, but for narrow band applications, this is not a big handicap. For me, this attenuator is a good addition to what I already had. ? Yves ? De?: [email protected] <[email protected]> De la part de Jim Ford ? Hi, George and Yves.? I used an 8310 at work a few years ago.? We found the attenuator modules inside the box unreliable, unfortunately.? At least the interface was simple enough.? Good luck with yours!? ? ? ?Jim Ford ? ? ? Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device ? ? -------- Original message --------
From: Gyorgy Albert <gyorgy.albert@...> Date: 11/17/23 2:04 PM (GMT-08:00) Subject: Re: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] OT Weinschel/Aeroflex 8310 programmable attenuator ? Hi Yves, ? I have an identical unit like yours. The 8310 manual is not really including the setup and programming details, only on the top level, to access the attenuator values. In the 8210 manual ( this is the controller, and it is the board with the 24LC256) there are more details. Here is a link to the pdf file : ? ? It is quite a smart device, as the attenuators themselves. Actually I have a pair of 150T series 18 GHz attenuators (11+110 dB), and I tried to configure the 8210, to replace the original 0.8-2.4 GHz attenuator. During the initial trials, at a moment I was desperate because it was not working, and I assumed that it might be a good idea, to erase the EEPROM which contains the configuration, so I can start with a fresh one. But unfortunately it erased also the display and keyboard settings. ? After that, I figured out, that it was a mistake in the manual, and this was the cause of my settings failure. So all the settings worked in the end, and I could configure the new attenuator pair. ? Since I wrote the first email I made some other trials, and I have a hunch. There are some system level command keywords, which are not directly accessible over GPIB, used for the configuration. But you define a Macro, which contains these system level commands. You can set the default Poweron macro to execute some system level commands, and this will enable the display/keyboard at startup ( in the 8210 manual there is a reference to a document: SmartStep Programmers Reference, but I have not find it. It could contain the missing information. I wrote to Spectrumcontrol, but as I imagined, they didn¡¯t answer). ? These macros are saved to the EEPROM, so making a copy, I could use it. But this is even not necessary (as I figured out). The Macros can be read out on GPIB. If you could try to read them out, I can give you the command sequence ( of course they are in the 8210 manual). In my 8310, after the EEPROM erasure, there us only a default Poweron macro, which is doing in fact nothing. The EEPROM is not containing any Macro definition (because this is the default, and it is not saved in the EEPROM, it is in the firmware). ? Thanks in advance, G Gyorgy Albert Tehnologistic +40-722-304534 ?
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