The Agilent web site has most of the manuals for the 5372a.  The data
sheet and the "Condensed Specification & Reference Guide" (over 100
pages!) gives you most of the functionality.

The 5372a's biggest deficiencies for a time nut are its resolution of
only 150ps and its maximum built-in timing period of 8 seconds.  This
means that even though it can calculate Allan Deviation, it's limited to
about 1.5e-10 @ 1 sec. and it can't calculate anything beyond a tau of 8
seconds.  You have to use external means to improve the noise floor
(e.g. mixers).  The 8 second limitation can be sidestepped if you use
GPIB to pull the data and process it externally.

The 13M readings per second that Magnus mentioned is limited to
measuring the period of the incoming signal and then incrementing a
count of how many measurements were in that range.  There are 2000
'bins' that can be as small as 200ps wide.  No time stamping, no
calculations, just how many measurements were in that range.  Useful
but, at the same time, limited.  I recently used it to collect 100M
measurements of the 10 MHz output of a Navsync GPS receiver.  I was able
to infer the algorithm that they used to keep the output on frequency.
If I remember correctly, it took less than 20 seconds to collect and
plot the data!

Ed

SAIDJACK@aol.com wrote:

Hi Said,

SAIDJACK@aol.com skrev:

Not too high if you look around. 950 USD and up it seems.

Some at fantasy prices. Ah well.

Any news on the reason for Wavecrest disaperance? I haven't seen any
real news on being bought or folding... althought I would not be
surprised about the later.

They are still current, so it does not match the hobby folks, but quite
nice. As always there is something to wish for, but that is what I
always nag about. The live update graph mode is very useful. A Zoom
feature and cursored read-out (as well as delta-cursors) would be nice,
but that is left out for the TimeView software.

You might have better success with finding them rebranded as Fluke. This
is a result of the old Fluke-Philips cooperation.
Look for Fluke PM 6690.

Cheers,
Magnus

Ed,

Ed Palmer skrev:

It is recommended reading regardless if you have one or not.

As has been done for instance by Bregni. An important detail to the
5372A architecture is the continously ticking time clock, so if you set
up a single measure and read it out binary and then quickly setup
another one you can run it in continous mode without problem. The 5372A
programmers manual is about as detailed as it can get. I have not seen
anything quite like it.

There is two modes, fast mode (13,3 MS/s) and normal mode (10 MS/s).
Both has the same burst lengths, but for fast mode some data is not
stored away, so counter-length is effectively reduced. It is reasnoble
when running higher rates for shorter periods of time.

The resolution is 200 ps for all types of measurements.

That's the histogram hardware, which is unique to the 5372A compared to
the 5371A. However, several normal measurements can also be run in fast
mode.

When you come to terms with it, it can be a very efficient measurement tool!

The three most annoying things about it is memory size, time resolution
and time-wrapping. There are a number of user interface issues and other
limitations to annoy me, but those three annoys me mostly. Other than
that, it is an instrument I trust and love. It still shines on some
aspects. The Wavecrests shines on some things, the SRS 620 on others and
the CNT-90 is to some degree much more handy. None of them fully
replaces it however.

Cheers,
Magnus