HP 5245L Nixie Counter - Part 7: HP 5264 Preset, HP 5262 Time Interval, HP 5257 Transfer Oscillator

[@brianbeasley7270]

Having worked at "Santa Clara Division of HP" 40+ years ago, I love your videos. I was the service engineer for the 5334 Counter! So I literally "wrote the book" on troubleshooting that unit.

[@CuriousMarc]

Good job!

[@eloyex]

You belong to the era of the great achivers so ...! When HP was HP ...!

[@Powertampa]

How many more years until we hear you go "I found this old NASA equipment" only for the camera to pan to show the command module shell xD

[@MeriaDuck]

Live, from the moon 😂

[@largepimping]

Marc, your occasional "interesting" pronunciations are part of the charm of the channel. Keep saying "aliasing" whatever way you want!

[@thesteelrodent1796]

it's called an accent

[@neillthornton1149]

It looks like the 5257A has "ALQ-78" etched into it. That was one of the original electronic warfare receiver systems on the Navy's P-3 sub hunter aircraft. I makes me wonder if that module lived a life looking for submarines, and detecting the frequency of the radar pulses it was receiving?

[@CuriousMarc]

Oh, great catch. We have Lockheed nearby in Sunnyvale, and I have a few instruments in my collection that came from Lockheed and were clearly used for electronic warfare equipment calibration. It is quite plausible that this is another one of them, used for the manufacturing, maintenance or calibration of the AN/ALQ-78 system. This whole line of HP microwave instruments, with unbelievably high performance for the time, was squarely aimed at the radar and defense market.

[@PileOfEmptyTapes]

Figures that HP would have used a modulo-f PLL in 1968. A good decade later, a few FM tuners used the same principle to grid-lock their primarily mechanically-tuned LOs to either 50 or 100 kHz. The point was combining the stability of a PLL tuner with the high Q of a mechanically-tuned frontend (not to mention the small pulling range kept phase noise down, a major problem in early PLL tuners that was limiting their SNR until people figured out how to make lower-noise VCOs - turns out that using a high-value resistor for varicap isolation directly adds its broadband voltage noise to the tuning voltage, modulating capacitance accordingly). Since regular tuners already tended to provide a certain amount of pulling range (courtesy of a varicap diode) for AFC, that part of the circuit would have been easily adapted, you "merely" needed the sampling and PLL bits. Frequency readout was generally provided by both a classic dial scale and a digital counter by then. See Pioneer TX-9800 and Mitsubishi DA-F20. Incidentally, grid-locking an oscillator like that goes back about another decade, with the Siemens E-311 communications receiver (introduction ca. 1960). With no varicap diodes in sight, they had to employ variable inductors (L changing with saturation governed by DC current), think magnetic amplifier technology. Very steampunk! 'scuse me if I have posted this before (I have a feeling I may), I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record... broken record... broken record... *snap* crackle* *pop* ... Anyway... I'm routinely in awe of what Silicon Valley flea markets will provide!

[@joe08867]

I learned more about this old equipment from you than I ever did in school. Great work, as always.

[@trickyd499]

Marc pushes nerdiness to unprecedented levels 😆

[@FaithyJo]

Wake up babe! New CuriousMarc video! 😊

[@shawnhuk]

Marc, man I love the intro music. Gets me bobbing each time!

[@ronjohnson9690]

Your videos feature some of the best mysteries I have ever listened in on. Hunting down the culprit and finding it is an amazing process. Thank you for the mind expansion!

[@graemedavidson499]

HP frequency counter plugin design team - a division in all but name! They came up with so many ingenious ways to measure frequencies outside the base counter frequency!

[@MichaelEhling]

In love elevator music explanation time.

[@rallymax2]

Tying to the Apollo frequency at the end was a nice touch.

[@nixxonnor]

Mind boggling and awesome as always. Keep it up, you curious Marc :D

[@DrFrank-xj9bc]

And I thought I already had known all of the different frequency counting methods of HP. Great job of explaining this "new" method, with elevator music 😄. I just love your trouble finding methods. Many thanks.

[@danielatbasementtech]

I just love your persistence… and always love simple solutions (extender missing wire).

[@DK640OBrianYT]

Yup. Thanks from Denmark, Scandinavia. Viva, Aloha und Gesundheit.

[@MattMcIrvin]

I don't know if it was specifically these, but I remember using rack-mount components very, very much like these in undergrad physics lab courses in the 1990s. I remember once rigging up some kind of setup that was counting particles detected from some radioactive source on the Nixie tube, and just thinking "if Hugh Everett is right there's another component of the universal wavefunction that is exactly like this world except that there's a different number being shown on that Nixie tube."

[@624Dudley]

Always astonishing. 👍

[@theelmonk]

I had a standalone instrument with that comb method. I've forgotten the number now but it was full-rack with Nixies like the 5245, and no plugin. It did the multiplier search on it's own, with logic. It mixed the comb with the incoming signal, obtaining one low-frequency result. It worked out which tooth of the comb was mixing by looking at how far the result shifted when the oscillator was varied : this gave the multiplier. It was a lot like the 5340A, but if I recall correctly it had a much lower direct input (12.4MHz ?) and a mixed input to 12.4 GHz.

[@SubTroppo]

I recently learned a new French expression which might be apt when it comes to describing the contributors to this channel: "Jusqu'au boutiste ".

[@orbitingeyes2540]

NASA is going to want all that gear back for Artemis! 😂

[@cmjones01]

Nice plugins. The 5257A is really neat. I've got one which works but found it very difficult to use in the "real world" - the input seems quite insensitive so driving it from a FET probe or similar to see what's going on in a circuit is more difficult than I'd like.

[@mmmyke1784]

Quick qustion: on the archive pictrure taken from the apollo tracking station, there are no plug-in modules in the counters. Was is enough for them without any plugin?

[@Rob2]

Probably they used a centralized solution to convert the frequencies to be measured to 0-50MHz so the basic counter could measure them without plugins...

[@CuriousMarc]

They either had their own converters or were monitoring IF. Which is sort of one and the same thing…

[@w9gb]

Marc, Time to begin design for an Earth Receive setup of Artemis II (late 2024, early 2025). Radio amateurs (1969-72) did this (S-band) with Apollo program. DIY Challenge for 55 years later.

[@Rob2]

Today that is much easier, due to the availability of SHF equipment and SDR technology. There are several amateurs that routinely monitor spacecraft and at least display the received spectrum, some also demodulate the data.

[@jamesbrewer3020]

Great work, as always.

[@analogdesigner-Jay]

WOW! Nice troubleshooting...

[@larryscott3982]

23:12 right about here I was shouting: adapter pin out ???

[@trevor20988]

This is, what, the fourth time he's been missing a pin on that cable 😂?

[@larryscott3982]

@@trevor20988 At two times before. Made me chuckle when it was pin out.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Another nice restoration video. That's one more for the Houston! :) You could try a ribbon cable with IDC Centronics connectors on both side, 1:1 on all contacts.

[@SeanBZA]

Would suggest instead using a small PCB to adapt the centronics to an IDE footprint, so you get a shielded cable each way, using an ATA66 capable IDE cable, with that special connector that feeds all the ground connections on half the cable together to a few pins.

[@MarsMan2482]

love your stuff, I want to be like you some day

[@przemyslawbrys]

Thanks for another great content.

[@nmjerry]

I remember when fast counters had neon lamps in rows of 10 , each row representing a digit, and the light would raise up each digit.

[@jurjenbos228]

Stumbling onto a stack of HP counter plugin modules. I have to admit that never happens to me.

[@TechGorilla1987]

@15:32 - "...we will have to repair this one..." Gee, what a terrible, terrible shame. Merde. 😁

[@TRBORADIO]

Hi there! Nice video, can be that this counter have more bandwidth than those that use a RF cavity? I don't know for what use HP produced this counter but if the oscillator that you want to sintonize it's clear is in several GHz, anything you do will change several hundreds of MHz up or down. If the cavity have very high Q it will have a very small active range and will be a very hard try to sintonize GHz the oscillator. By the way if you have some replacement transistor guide I have a JFET that I can't found any info about it. The part is 2SK206-3

[@SeanBZA]

More for the ultra wide range of input in a single plug in unit. The others are a lot more stable because of the cavities, but have limited bandwidth, but this one is wide band, though stability is slightly less, because it then relies on the counter oscillator to do the work. Also a little more sensitive to poor signal and to noise, in that there is no filter to reject them.

[@TRBORADIO]

@@SeanBZA At the time this counters was in production, in which com equipment was used? to test magnetrons, some radar receivers? T3 base stations at that time I'm thinking not :)

[@SeanBZA]

@@TRBORADIO No, but it likely was used because it is very wide range, with the other plugins then being used for the bands they needed, as the tuned cavity is very much immune to stray signals (imagine used with airport RADAR sweeping across the city every few seconds, giving a nice blip on channel 32 to annoy you when working) outside the band, and also even to close in signals, like an adjacent channel transmitter to the one you are monitoring. Would have been used to repair microwave links, which use multiple channels next to each other on the main carrier, so the tuned ones are needed for image rejection, but the broad tuning is there to get a single tone used to set the multiplier on frequency.

[@miriamn1075]

So? How much better is the 5255A with both diodes vs. the one with only one diode?

[@CuriousMarc]

See previous video: . kzbin.info/www/bejne/mWiWYoCbdtiKp8kfeature=shared&t=3166 . I had improved the video amp so much that they ended up performing the same!

[@natedawww]

Will there be more 8-inch floppy drive repairs in our future, or are those over and done with after the previous marathon batch?

[@CuriousMarc]

More 8” adventures coming. That’s the project that keeps being pushed away from the bench by new distracting arrivals…

[@cosmolittle1395]

The Feb 1968 issue of the HP Journal has a full description of the HP5256A downconvertor and the HP5257A transfer oscillator, together with an analysis of the frequency resolution that can be achieved with each technique. Marc, I do not think you have the 5256A? Otherwise you are the King of the 5245L and modules

[@cvetomircvetkov5670]

@CuriousMarc Marc, when you find a faulty active component such as a transistor, do you check the passive circuitry around to make sure it is not another fault? Why do active components fail actually (presumably all passive ones around are ok)?

[@SkigBiggler]

Active components are a lot more sensitive to small changes in composition or chemistry. In transistors, heat and over voltage slowly cause the silicon doping to migrate, and in a poorly designed chip, or one being driven outside its comfort zone, heat expansion might crack the die. Passive components, excepting electrolytic caps, also drift over time and with use, but their functionality isn’t nearly as dependent on their chemical or small scale structure. So a resistor slowly drifts and loses or gains a bit of resistance, and a transistor might eventually develop a short, and then destroy its functionality.

[@CuriousMarc]

It really depends. When the failed component should not have been under stress or failed in an odd way, I sometimes look around for something that could have caused the undue stress. But this is a classic failure of a regulating power transistor, that is the most stressed component of the entire board. So no alarm flags here. I just quickly looked around, particularly if the power resistor feeding it was discolored, but it looked perfectly fine, and left it at that.

[@Bocuma]

Which flea market did you get these at? Saratoga?

[@CuriousMarc]

Yes, the one in Saratoga. I have to control myself or I would buy way too much…

[@Bocuma]

​@@CuriousMarcHaha, I was there and saw these units on a table

[@CuriousMarc]

@@Bocuma And I didn’t even buy them all!

[@K_Hansen]

i actualy used all this stuff back in rbe day😂

[@KSingh-b6t]

Nice

[@Rob2]

Being designed 10 years later, this one has ICs in it! The programmable divider clearly uses them, probably 74xx TTL? That would have been a lot of transistors when done 10 years before...

[@CuriousMarc]

TTL for the common stuff, and ECL for the fast stuff.

[@georgemurdocca4871]

🎉

[@stevebunes9151]

wow . . .

[@FUNKLABOR_DL1LEP]

😎👍

[@bigsarge2085]

✌️✌️

[@manuelmigues8542]

Bonjour ! Savez vous parler Français ? Vous avez un accent Français. Merci pour vos vidéos très intéressantes 👍

[@CuriousMarc]

Oui, je suis français.

[@marekkowalski6767]

🇵🇱 tnx.

[@68hoffman]

kool

[@jasonmurawski5877]

I don’t know if I’m first or not, but do I get a prize if I am?

[@CuriousMarc]

KZbin says second, but close enough for me. You are hereby awarded a Time Interval plugin so you can more precisely measure your reaction time to opening new CuriousMarc videos next time around!

[@jasonmurawski5877]

@@CuriousMarc woo!

[@Xsiondu]

Sweet!

[@RobSchofield]

You're gonna need a bigger add-on collection.

[@TRBORADIO]

HP equipment, check, complete Apollo showcase, checked. Wouldn't it be cool to install a Raspberry PI4 and an AI engine on R2-D2 and show them too? :)

[@AmiPurple]

No audio?

[@jasonmurawski5877]

Audio is fine

[@CuriousMarc]

Sometimes when you are super early the audio is missing. Try in a few minutes.

[@AmiPurple]

Thank you it's fine now, can't blame me for being so early to awesome content