HP 5342A Microwave Frequency Counter upgrade and we fire up the Cesium clock to calibrate it!
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2024
- We give our HP 5342A 18 GHz frequency counter a little TLC by upgrading it to a high stability crystal oven oscillator, find a surprise hidden inside, and fire up the Cesium clock to calibrate it.
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Is it weird that I find myself drooling over that 1978 HP catalogue?
HEY ALL! Marc will be a guest on Keysight live from the lab!!!! Plus you can win some sweet test equipment. It’s kind of like a carnival of electronic goodness.
I will! Keysight just came in to film in the lab last week! [Edit] Here is the link to the video: ruclips.net/video/qwocVH3_1Eo/видео.html
Old school HP equipment are pure works of art. They are so beautifully engineered and assembled.
Yes indeed, the snap action key was designed by Bill West. He and I were in the same department at HP Labs in the 1990s. Quite a character.
As a young man, he risked his life to sabotage Nazi trains in the Netherlands.
His wife gave him a present of his choice every year after he quit smoking. One year it was a digital readout radial arm saw. I bought his old one. He always insisted I show him my hands to prove I had not cut off any fingers with it.
Wow! We got royalty in printing engineering! Thanks for commenting on the channel!
I haven’t clicked this fast to watch something in quite a while. I enjoy the test gear as much as I do the Apollo stuff. Good stuff!
That thing is simply gorgeous inside. The sheer class & beauty that we’ve sacrificed in modern electronics makes me sad.
At 17:05 you can clearly see that the spring for the number 5 key has escaped its cage and is making a slow getaway.
Thanks, had not seen it!
Sharp eyes!!! :D
All "HP units" when it was HP 1960s to 1990s were so well built they were beautiful construction to see & use, yes very heavy, but as a collector got hooked on well made test Equipment when working as a manager of the UKAS laboratory, now retired & still collecting these wonderful units :), you have a very nice collection Sir, Kind regards Philip...
PS I do agree they do not make full service manuals like they used to do,
CuriousMarc: "Itr's an easy upgrade"
Also CuriousMarc: (turns on cesium clock to calibrte the upgraded frequency counter)
The engineering and build quality of this old HP gear was second to none. Marc, very wise of you not to run the Cesium Beam too often, the last time I checked a Cesium Beam tube rebuild was $40k, that was over 20 years ago, probably can't get it done now. I really must see if my HP 5061 will run again, the cool thing is it has the analogue clock option on the front panel.
Ooh you got the Patek Philippe clock option! Nice!
I had a quick Google, you can get replacement tubes, but yeah it's a very much "if you have to ask" type situation.
@@RikkiCattermole Yeah, and as most customers were Military they didn't have to ask.
You can't beat 80's HP test gear. Built to a quality, not a price.
Also, those pushbutton keys can be brought back to the original feel with a liberal spray of deoxit D5. They feel and work amazing for years afterwards.
The Deoxit Fader F5 formula works even better on the keys, lubricating the spring/plastic contact. Apply from front panel, panel "face-up" at the upper right corner of each button, with flow turned low. Just a quick shot is plenty.
I just bought and performed the identical OCXO upgrade shown here, with the better oscillator. It apparently uses the forward CE drop of a Darlington pair of transistors attached to the crystal can as a heat source! I had a friend calibrate to a GSPDO. I was lucky the high range sampler wasn't blown. Worked perfectly, all for $100.00. A vey brief shot of Deoxit Fader F5 along the upper right edge of each button with the unit standing face up gets the fluid into the area of the metal clicky-strip and restores smooth, even feel to all the keys without disassembly. I 3D printed a set of replacement feet, as this one came shoeless. No other options in mine besides HP-IB though. Thanks for the video. Very helpful during the upgrade. Great for tuning my Motorola DMR radios so they work with picky Pistar MMDVM hotspots.
Great to hear!
Which 3D files did you use to reprint the feet?
Hmm, need to calibrate the counter, but GPS is so... pedestrian. Let's fire up the atomic clock.
Love it.
They way that thing looks with the case off of it.. It's an absolute work of art.
Another great counter! Almost all of my instruments have the 10811 OCXO's, like my 5350B for example. However I installed a 10544A in my HP 5335A and it still works great. Thanks for another great video Marc!
I serviced so many of these. I recall the power supply input filter capacitors would often go low value or open. Also the 1826-0372 IF amplifier custom IC was prone to be failures.
The input sampler was ok, as long as the user did not overload it..
Thanks for the nice video. I got to get a new can of Deoxit one of these days. There has to be a lot of lost art in older HP instruments, thanks for keeping it alive. I always get a kick out of powering on my two Rubidium sources and the GPS and watch them all lock in on the scope.
Craig
Hi Marc, amazing design engineering from HP. The extruded aluminium sections is in itself a work of art. Thanks for sharing, fascinating stuff! 👍
Great video as always... There is also a slight mechanical difference between the older and newer version of the OXCO,
On the newer OXCO , the OD of studs at the bottom are slightly larger in diameter. When i did the same upgrade on my 5340A, I had to enlarge the through holes in the mount to get it fitted.
The amber "alarm" light is the basic indicator of physics lock (or non-lock, I guess..) - the green "continuous operation" light only turns on when you press the logic reset button, and turns off if the physics loop ever loses lock, even if it's subsequently reattained.
Ah thanks, I was wondering about that bizarre behavior. Makes sense now. I guess that is a lab clock standard.
Fun coming back here after your video repairing the 5245!
Wait until you see the 18 GHz plugin repair for the HP 5245! The HP 5342 uses the same sampling converter and multiplier principle, upgraded and refined for the microprocessor and digital frequency synthesis age. So the HP 5342 really the grand child of the HP 5245.
@@CuriousMarc I'm looking forward to it!
Even the lack of on site WiFi on holiday , I managed too watch it even though its been afew days later.
Beautiful repair again. When will you be opening your museum Marc? 😉
Already opened! It’s a RUclips museum of sorts…
@@CuriousMarc 😂
Warming up the oven: In damp weather I have to let my Harman/Kardon HK6100 amp warm up until the music arrives from the connected CD player. That is the only parallel I can offer from my diminished position. Chapeau Marc! I wonder how many people were/are in the position to engineer such marvels?
This is brilliant work, thanks for sharing Marc!
HP in the mid-'90s developed a completely new OCXO from the ground-up- a hermetically sealed unit known as the E1938, which has even better stability than the 10811 series. For some reason, however, they decided not to use them in their own instruments, instead selling them to companies which made cell site equipment.
This old HP gear is just amazing. I have some myself, used to know people who worked with this before.
Ohh. There's one of those in my workshop at work. I've never used it. I'll have to have a look on Monday.
Another half hour of enjoyment thanks Marc cant wait for the next one
I am so happy that you recently got into RF stuff. And like vintage, cool RF stuff too!
I’ve repaired a couple of these, doing 9 videos about them, I suggest you go through and reseat all of the boards as they do oxidise a bit and reseating they cards can solve some issues with them, prevention before it fails 👍🤓
You have got some marvelous gear to play with. Good choice to twke the Cs-reference and not the GPS disciplined oscillator. Fits the era way better.
It's funny how the West keys tend to go south. Great video Marc! Makes me want to fix the broken reset key on my 5342A. I bet it's a spring related issue as well. It already has the fancy oven and GPIB but that's it. The extended dynamic range 003 is a very nice option that protects the input at the cost of a little sensitivity. I'm always super careful with the input. Treat it like a spectrum analyzer and don't blow the sampler.
"It's funny how the West keys tend to go south."
That took me a moment to get :D
Another successful repair video, thanks Marc.
YES!! More HP test equipment! Thanks Marc!
So much fun and a real treat. Thanks Curious Marc!
The quality and engineering that HP put into their kit then is a thing of joy. Designed and built by Engineers for Engineers.
tomorrows engineers. yesterday.
I like the mechanical shell used on that frequency counter. Same one as used on my HP 3314 sig gens. Really easy to work on.
Lots of screws though.
Cheers,
o my... what in the world did they use during the Manhattan Project? this stuff must of been a dream come true in those days. 🥰 thanks a lot ☕
Great to find the unfinished repair inside!
Always learning new things from your videos. Amazing work. Thank you
I am always just astounded by the elegance of older electronics and the ability to fix them, you don't see that really today with the whole disposable mentality
While you had the display board off, you could have added option 004 (DAC output) by adding the missing components. I did that and works like charm.
My mouth is just hanging open,,, WOW. Not even trying to sound pretentious but,,, I don't get impressed easily ,,,, Yeah this did it. Runner up is some of the merch someone designed for this channel,, Really nice and thanks.
I know that instrument. Programmed a HP 21mx to control that (brand new) and many other instruments on HPIB.
all the PPM's! Great vid thanks Marc!
Fascinating, wonderful, satisfying.
"I'm not gonna get the cesium clock out."
...
*gets-the-cesium-clock-out*
Beautiful Chanel 😍
I think they were more worried about stray signals getting in rather than leaving the instrument. I remember a video of an early-'90s R&S spectrum analyzer (with Transputers, no less) which had a silver plated copper mesh in front of the LCD display. This had an active-matrix colour display back when they just started to show up in laptop computers from the likes of NEC and Compaq.
Fascinating as always ... thanks !
Ahh, the infamous Bill West switches. I seem to recall they were eager to get rid of those when they did "B" upgrades of instruments like the 3585B and 3325B. (replacing them with elastomer keyboards). I think there were a lot of warranty issues with Bill West. Takes me back..
A nice way to go is find a GPS disciplined crystal oscillator. Very low phase noise and super long term stability.
Very informative video since I have a 5342a.
I still think how one can forget to solder a resistor in the middle of a repairing.....😃
I finally saw a good use of Lissajous! Why did you calibrate only at 5MHz? I thought Cs clock had 9G Hz or so. For for 5Mz you could use any low cost frequency synthesizer.
Excelent work
17:06 spring from key 5 has also slipped out of the key stem.
Neat, neat!!
Thanks
Great Video! Believe it or not, I have found even 'virgin' HP and Tek equipment with loose screws--maybe a out-of-cal screw-gun...
Question: At the last when you were setting the 5 MHz, your display was just to the nearest Hz; don't you have a range that shows more digits (fractions of a Hertz) or be able to show period with greater display resolution?
Nope! Single Hertz is all you get. I’m not complaining though.
@@CuriousMarc I guess I understand that given that this is really meant for RF and you are not going into fractions or period like a universal counter. Thanks for the reply, I duz lernz sumpthin’ ever-day watchin’ ur channel !!! 🤣😂🤣
Great video and thanking you for your time to repair Very difficult machine's.
Is there any possibility to make a video for that is not possible to repair with the causes? And now you used for space part.
Did you have in your mind to give away any of your repaired and not used from you system for charity porpoises?
Thanks again Keep up the good quality of your videos
Does your microwave go ping when it finishes counting?
1978 that the vintage that I am
Marc: Now to calibrate it with either the GPS or if i want to be really fancy the caesium clock .. but that takes half an hour to get going ..
Also Marc but 2 seconds later: So this is my caesium clock ..
Spark plug sockets👍
Wow, 24hr warmup period. I'm guessing the power consumption is not small, quite an electrical investment to get that stability.
I'm far far away from understanding things on this channel, but I'm still amazed and sometimes I even get a bit educated at my microscopic level. I guess it is an obvious reason but why is the age rate @1:50 in x per month for the standard crystal and in x per day for option 001 in the catalogue. Is it just to make it harder for noobs like me to even understand the comparison? 😁
NICE!!
Hello Marc, I'm again not d'accord with your OCXO adjustment, as it's not appropriate for its level of stability. At first, let it stabilize for at least 48h. The Lissajou method is not sensitive enough for 10^-9 .. 10^-10 level, what you may want to achieve. The 5342A itself resolves 2*10^-7 only, at a 5,000,000 display. Therefore, use your 5334B as an A=> B channel T.I. counter feeding 5MHz from the Cs versus the 10MHz from the 10611 OCXO. Or use divided down 1 pps signals from both oscillators (by PicDIV). That should be good enough for quickly aligning the OCXO roughly to 10^-9. If you use TimeLab to monitor the difference over an extended period of time, you may get even lower stability figures. The teardown, explanation and repair part is excellent, as always. 1080p video resolution seems to be corrupted somehow.
EDIT: 1. TimeLab does not directly support the 5334B (only the 5335A), but it may work anyhow by using the TALK ONLY mode.
2. You might use your 5334B as a high(er) resolution direct frequency comparator (Cs vs. 10611 inside 5342A) also, as it's got 4ns interpolation. 10MHz as ref. input to its rear, 5Mhz Cs in, choose 1.. 100sec gate time, or averaging, to achieve < 10^-9 resolution for adjustment.
Impressive build quality of these old HP instruments. Anyone know how it looks today? Cheap plastic all around?
Love it 👍 😉
I have a curious HP frequency source that relies on a frequency synthesizer corrected by a VLF radio. The 5110B Synthesizer Driver drives a 5100B Synthesizer which somehow is synched with a Tracor 599-402 VLF Track Receiver. The Synthesizer Driver didn't work on all it's outputs until I repaired a bad transistor and a ferrite slug that had crumbled. Anybody have any idea of what this was used for?
Wow. I didn't even know you could sync a 5100 to another radio! The 5100 is one big monster of a synthesizer!
@@CuriousMarc Yes on both. I bought the thing from an estate sale thinking it was just a VLF radio only to realize they were connected together. I have all the manuals for it but that still doesn't explain why. It is very heavy. Perhaps the VLF radio sent it frequency corrections as it has a roll of paper that prints out deviations.
splendid.
Restores AGC
Replace button contact == extra challenge
I come here for therapy; here and Mr Carson's lab.
Just today I found a Computer Measurements Company, Model 225C Universal Counter-Timer in my late fathers stash of stuff. Is this instrument something someone might want, or not being an HP is it just junk?
"Built like a piece of military equipment." Marc, don't impugn this fine device like that!
👍
Doesn't that counter have a external reference input ? Feed it 10 MHz from a GPS disciplined oscillator or other reference and you'll have even better accuracy and stability.
Where do you get your tweezers?
Techni-Tool! Took me a while to find one that sold clean-room quality Swiss precision tweezers, and not the Chinese ones with dull ends and soft metal.
@@CuriousMarc which brand do you reccomend? There's so many!
@@lachlanlau Mine are their Techni Tool brand. I can dig and find the models if you want.
I gotta ask, what’s the blue horn mounted on the table for?
It’s the spiral log antenna for the S-Band Apollo setup.
@@CuriousMarc Marc, what I would do to just hand out in your lab for a week. Love the videos as always, thanks for always responding.
How did you remove the keycap from the West key? I've tried removing one from my 4262A but is seemed that it was stuck there for good.
Jut pulled on it carefully. Actually pushed the key from underneath with a small prybar shaped tool. It was on there pretty good.
@@CuriousMarc thanks for the tip. I’ll try it next time I encounter those keys.
I'm leaving a comment before I watched the video? Now that's a first for me.
LUL. Cost 20 Grand, wasn't even soldered up right. Previous person writhing in shame. Good fix Marc.
Mind boggling that this instrument have a 6800 in1978.
What's boggling about that? I'm seriously asking not being sarcastic.
@@whiskeytuesday probably just that that’s so early. Could also have to do with how the first 6800s were basically overengineered and overpriced until the 6501 and 6502 got them to make some cost-reduced designs (like the 6807).
They don't make them like that anymore 😭
Great video as usual. Extremely interesting. Thanks a lot for it!
By the way: Nice touch with the Ukrainian flag. Thanks for that. 🙂
Support Ukrania! 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
Say no to any aggressor!
P.S.: Also thanks for the subtitles. Very much appreciated! 🙂
The days when HP was an extraordinary company, and not in search of excellence.... Now it just produces crap...
Well isn’t it always the little things. Hugely complicated instrument compromised by a human oversight.
There's no sound
FIRST!!!!
Congrats! You are hereby awarded a vintage resistor with only one end soldered. You have to complete the soldering of the other end within 30 years.
@@CuriousMarc this is hilarious. Also, I imagined letting that 30 years lapse because I’ll go “30 years? That’s ages. I’ll do that later”, repeatedly, until there’s only a few weeks left!
360p crew in the house.
Second ...