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All:
Picked one of these, with Opt 31, a while back and... wow.? Just, wow.? The more that I research it and play around with it the more impressed I am with it's capabilities and usefulness.? After reading a few other owner's experiences with it a common theme is; "How did I miss knowing about this?? Why is it not well known?" - very much my reaction.? I would think that if any one group of people might be aware of it, those here would be the ones.? But here, as elsewhere, there are very few mentions about it.? Anyone else use one of these?? Usage tips or other information?
Just curious,
Hal
Datasheet:
http://www.testequipmenthq.com/datasheets/Agilent-53310A-Datasheet.pdf
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Hal,
Congrats on joining the modulation domain!
As you know already, it’s really a sleeper. Although it works very well for viewing any sort of frequency modulated waveform, my personal favorite use for it is as an extremely precise counter. There is a reason that it’s called a frequency microscope.?
FYI, adding the deep memory option is quite easy. If you search around you’ll find instructions. All you need are 4 more SRAMs and to move a couple of jumpers after installing them.
Sean
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 05:34 AM, Harold Foster wrote:
All:
Picked one of these, with Opt 31, a while back and... wow.? Just, wow.? The more that I research it and play around with it the more impressed I am with it's capabilities and usefulness.? After reading a few other owner's experiences with it a common theme is; "How did I miss knowing about this?? Why is it not well known?" - very much my reaction.? I would think that if any one group of people might be aware of it, those here would be the ones.? But here, as elsewhere, there are very few mentions about it.? Anyone else use one of these?? Usage tips or other information?
Just curious,
Hal
Datasheet:
http://www.testequipmenthq.com/datasheets/Agilent-53310A-Datasheet.pdf
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Just saw this topic. My go-to for precise time/period measurement has been the venerable 5370A. Aside from the obvious improvements such as a graphical display, history, etc., from a pure accuracy/resolution perspective, which would you pick for precision measurement? I suppose this isn't a particularly fair question, given all the additional features of the 53310A, but my typical use has been measuring such things as phase diff over time between various high-precision oscillators (example, my cesium-beam osc and a GPS-disciplined osc). I have an opportunity to pick up a 53310A, wondering if I should.
Bill
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Hello,
two videos:
a) what it is for
b) PSU repair, mandatory:
Tam
With best regards
Tam HANNA
Enjoy electronics? Join 15k7 other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at
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Hal,
Congrats on joining the modulation domain!
As you know already, it’s really a sleeper. Although it works
very well for viewing any sort of frequency modulated waveform,
my personal favorite use for it is as an extremely precise
counter. There is a reason that it’s called a frequency
microscope.?
FYI, adding the deep memory option is quite easy. If you search
around you’ll find instructions. All you need are 4 more SRAMs
and to move a couple of jumpers after installing them.
Sean
On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 05:34 AM, Harold Foster wrote:
All:
Picked one of these, with Opt 31, a while back and... wow.?
Just, wow.? The more that I research it and play around with it
the more impressed I am with it's capabilities and usefulness.?
After reading a few other owner's experiences with it a common
theme is; "How did I miss knowing about this?? Why is it not
well known?" - very much my reaction.? I would think that if any
one group of people might be aware of it, those here would be
the ones.? But here, as elsewhere, there are very few mentions
about it.? Anyone else use one of these?? Usage tips or other
information?
Just curious,
Hal
Datasheet:
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Oh, what the heck. Why wait for advice? I just bought one, claims to be tested and working, $250. Hmm. Well, nothing more satisfying than impulse buys of new (old) toys that either work or that I get to fix.
Bill
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Hello,
either dead PSU or a cap on the display board usually lays these
flat.
Tam
With best regards
Tam HANNA
Enjoy electronics? Join 15k7 other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at
On 2020. 04. 16. 16:15, Bill E wrote:
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Oh, what the heck. Why wait for advice? I just bought one, claims
to be tested and working, $250. Hmm. Well, nothing more satisfying
than impulse buys of new (old) toys that either work or that I get
to fix.
Bill
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Thanks to everyone that has replied - addressing things brought up and some that haven't been..
For counting, my go-to combination is a 5335A with a 5340A (LED, but have the obligatory Nixie for eye-candy) for the high end.? While I love the accuracy the 53310a brings to frequency, rise time and jitter, it's that those are only a few of the things you can use it to determine and also how many options it allows you to approach any given criteria.? The more you use it, the more things you think of to use it for.? Many may not necessarily be the best way to solve a particular problem, but just the fact you are taking a different approach can open up new ways of thinking and solutions... it tends to make me say "Huh... How about that?" a lot.
Tam: you are right, but at least the repairs to the PSU and such is pretty easily done.? Also, there are several products HP came out with around then that share the same case... and power supply.? From what I've read, there are several revisions of the PSU and not all are as prone to failure as some.? That is from a couple references and I sure wish I remembered which ones; only preemptively replace the caps on the troublesome versions?
Re options, my daily driver has all of them and I just bought the SRAM to bring my other three up to the deep memory (I scored a deal on a batch of four locally.)? Of those only one has PS issues and, while the replacement caps have been bought, I just haven't had time to get into it - I work for a Gov contractor and evidently schedules haven't heard much about pandemics yet ;-)
On the plus side, I just walked in back and saw a pallet of 12 3458A's and 4 Fluke 5522A's... pure nerd porn.
Hal
Hal
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Hal,
?
It’s a slick little machine.? I managed to pick up a couple of units off of ePay, one being a real beater with needed options, spent an afternoon in surgery and pulled together a nearly new unit with full options.? The 2.5 GHz channel C option (030 minimum, 031 the best) is a must.
?
If you are into spread spectrum and other frequency hopping applications it sure makes it easy to see where things might go wrong.? And it can be helpful with the usual phase noise stuff.
?
I highly recommend obtaining the paper copy of the “HP 53310A Modulation Domain Analyzer Operating Reference Manual” (53310-90037) to keep handy near the unit to thumb through if you get lost.? It often pops up on the auction site.
?
There are times when I find that the resolution of the instrument is not as good as it could be in certain applications but overall you will find it very useful.? Even supplanting the Option 010 (OCXO) with an external GPSDO 10 MHz signal adds an extra bit of accuracy to it.
?
Greg
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Tam - I meant to say "Thank you!" earlier - when I was trying to find out what they were and whether I should pull the trigger on the purchase opportunity that I had, it was your excellent videos that convinced me to do so.? I decision that I am very, very happy to have made.
Hal
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Another thing... the CRT it it is the same one used for several HP products - does anyone know of a compatible CRT to LCD conversion kit?? Probably not, but wouldn't that just be something!
Hal
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For a very informative "Cliff-Notes" summary of the 53310A and some of it's capabilities, here is a link to a write-up Geller labs did:
Hal
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That's something I've been thinking about for a while now. I have several instruments where I'd like to replace the CRT. I know there have been a few people in the past that have done some for specific instruments, but I don't know of a general solution. One would think that for many instruments, should be fairly easy. They usually used OEM CRT displays that had simple analog or pseudo-digital intensity signals, and standard or close-to-standard scan rates. But, for the older style oscopes where it was a classic deflection CRT with the text additions being done by vector graphics, whole different game.My 54540 really needs a new CRT, modern replacement would rock. I'll add it to my list. :)
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Stay OFF the Danaher 57x series. My replacement for these is almost ready. As for the 53310A: not sure if it pays. You would need to use an FPGA to harvest the digital data being farted out. I wanted to do it once, but never had the time. However, afaik, the video board on these units is a separate board (as per the late Jzon Geller), and some instructions in the service manual of the 53310A even give some data about the pinout. Tam
With best regards Tam HANNA (emailing on a BlackBerry PRIV) Enjoy electronics? Join 14k other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at Am 16. April 2020 19:56:40 MESZ schrieb Bill E <solartron@...>:
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That's something I've been thinking about for a while now. I have several instruments where I'd like to replace the CRT. I know there have been a few people in the past that have done some for specific instruments, but I don't know of a general solution. One would think that for many instruments, should be fairly easy. They usually used OEM CRT displays that had simple analog or pseudo-digital intensity signals, and standard or close-to-standard scan rates. But, for the older style oscopes where it was a classic deflection CRT with the text additions being done by vector graphics, whole different game.My 54540 really needs a new CRT, modern replacement would rock. I'll add it to my list. :)
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On 4/16/20 2:04 PM, Tam Hanna wrote: As for the 53310A: not sure if it pays. You would need to use an FPGA to
harvest the digital data being farted out. I wanted to do it once, but
never had the time. However, afaik, the video board on these units is a
separate board (as per the late Jzon Geller), and some instructions in
the service manual of the 53310A even give some data about the pinout. You don't mean Joe Geller? "The late"? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
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Yeah. That dude went monk mode last time I heard. No idea...wish him well...
With best regards Tam HANNA (emailing on a BlackBerry PRIV) Enjoy electronics? Join 14k other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at Am 16. April 2020 20:39:02 MESZ schrieb Dave McGuire <mcguire@...>:
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On 4/16/20 2:04 PM, Tam Hanna wrote:
As for the 53310A: not sure if it pays. You would need to use an FPGA to
harvest the digital data being farted out. I wanted to do it once, but
never had the time. However, afaik, the video board on these units is a
separate board (as per the late Jzon Geller), and some instructions in
the service manual of the 53310A even give some data about the pinout.
You don't mean Joe Geller? "The late"?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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I use the much older Hp 5372A time/frequency analyzer, before they came up with the name Modulation Domain analyzer. It uses the 68000 processor series and is a bit dated from the 1980s, but when it comes to binning frequency fluctuations from our master RF reference source at the particle factory, this is the box. The older ones were all in one, with buttons to bring up statistics, allen dev, and other oscillator checks. It has an internal HP10811-series ovenized oscillator so everything is compared to that, or you can compare two different channels. I used it to prove that our fancy GPS-disciplined Meridian reference was awful compared to an old HP 105A double ovenized standard (that has the same 101811 inside!). Eventually we scrapped the Meridian receivers and got a new Stanford Research Associates GPS-disciplined source with excellent ovenized crystal oscillator. So I have to hand it to the 5372A for making the proof that I needed to convince another engineer that his new receivers were not up to snuff. I haven't played with the later modulation domain analyzers like the 53310A, so would be curious to hear how it works out and what sort of applications its handy for.
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Oh, oh oh. You had me scared for a minute. "The late" means "he
died", man. Not cool, please don't say that unless someone has actually
died. That's more important now than ever.
I talked with him a couple of years ago, he was doing fine.
-Dave
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On 4/16/20 2:41 PM, Tam Hanna wrote: Yeah. That dude went monk mode last time I heard. No idea...wish him well...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
With best regards
Tam HANNA (emailing on a BlackBerry PRIV)
Enjoy electronics? Join 14k other followers by visiting the Crazy
Electronics Lab at
Am 16. April 2020 20:39:02 MESZ schrieb Dave McGuire
<mcguire@...>:
On 4/16/20 2:04 PM, Tam Hanna wrote:
As for the 53310A: not sure if it pays. You would need to use an
FPGA to
harvest the digital data being farted out. I wanted to do it
once, but
never had the time. However, afaik, the video board on these
units is a
separate board (as per the late Jzon Geller), and some
instructions in
the service manual of the 53310A even give some data about the
pinout.
You don't mean Joe Geller? "The late"?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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Hello, Oops. I thought it meant dead, or retired from sth. Sorry for the scare.
With best regards Tam HANNA (emailing on a BlackBerry PRIV) Enjoy electronics? Join 14k other followers by visiting the Crazy Electronics Lab at Am 16. April 2020 20:45:42 MESZ schrieb Dave McGuire <mcguire@...>:
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Oh, oh oh. You had me scared for a minute. "The late" means "he
died", man. Not cool, please don't say that unless someone has actually
died. That's more important now than ever.
I talked with him a couple of years ago, he was doing fine.
-Dave
On 4/16/20 2:41 PM, Tam Hanna wrote:
Yeah. That dude went monk mode last time I heard. No idea...wish him well...
With best regards
Tam HANNA (emailing on a BlackBerry PRIV)
Enjoy electronics? Join 14k other followers by visiting the Crazy
Electronics Lab at
Am 16. April 2020 20:39:02 MESZ schrieb Dave McGuire
<mcguire@...>:
On 4/16/20 2:04 PM, Tam Hanna wrote:
As for the 53310A: not sure if it pays. You would need to use an
FPGA to
harvest the digital data being farted out. I wanted to do it
once, but
never had the time. However, afaik, the video board on these
units is a
separate board (as per the late Jzon Geller), and some
instructions in
the service manual of the 53310A even give some data about the
pinout.
You don't mean Joe Geller? "The late"?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
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--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
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I did the same several years ago - saw one on eBay, googled it & picked up the Geller Labs stuff, plus pdf manuals & bought it - a bit more than $250 though! Mine has Opt 31 plus all the memory but not the full OCXO, but then I use 10MHz from a Z3801A. It's been really useful for checking out oscillators and measuring frequency to the ppb range.
Does anyone know anything about the counter chip in that device? I looked at the old Win3.1 software that HP created for it (HP53305A), and delving into that it appears that the chip is programmable - the HP53305A software loads a different program that makes it behave differently. I wondered if it would be possible to get it to do phase continuous measurements over long periods but I haven't really got much further without more info on the counter.
73 John G8ONH
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On 16/04/2020 15:15, Bill E wrote: Oh, what the heck. Why wait for advice? I just bought one, claims to be tested and working, $250. Hmm. Well, nothing more satisfying than impulse buys of new (old) toys that either work or that I get to fix.
Bill
_._,_._,_
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Hi John,
Not familiar with the internal software in the 53310 but wanted to ask if you were aware of a user's guide specifically for option 031.? If not, it is downloadable at:
Greg
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Harold Foster
Dave McGuire