[rescue] cheap gps for time reference

[Dave McGuire]

On July 5, Bill Bradford wrote:
> >   Close...the Z3801A.  HiTech Cafe has about 1500 of them at $299. (!).
> > They need an antenna with a preamp, and 48VDC.  These are REALLY
> > REALLY NICE units, and a tremendous amount of bang for the buck as
> > either a time or frequency standard (or both).  They have a 10MHz
> > output for those lonely "ext std in" BNCs on the back of all of our HP
> > test equipment.
> >   See http://www.realhamradio.com/GPS_Frequency_Standard.htm for lots of
> > very good information about this unit, and PDFs of docs.
> >   They seem to have SprintPCS property stickers on them.  I guess the
> > suits at Sprint have found something else to stabilize the oscillators
> > at the towers.
> 
> UNGABUNGA.  Someone trade me one of these and $300 for this other 
> A5000 I have here... 8-)

  It's worth more than the A5000 you have there, Bill. ;) This is an
unbelievable price for an HP SmartClock box.  The list is over $5K,
and they're worth every penny.

  Oh yes...they need a little conversion to speak RS-232.  There's
support for it on the board but it needs a little soldering.  This is
what I meant by "I'll type up some info in a couple of days" but Scott
pressed the issue. ;) I was trying to figure out some way to get a
bunch of them and do the required mods here for people, but I'm not
sure how that'd work.  Installing a 120V power supply is trivial
except for cutting the chassis to accommodate an IEC
connector...except for doing that part, I'm willing to do that
hardware mod (and the RS232 part) for people if anyone's interested.
I just don't want it to cost me anything, 'cause my wallet is
experiencing that thinness that only an employee of an unfunded
startup company can understand. ;)

     -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire                  "Needing a calculator indicates that
St. Petersburg, FL              your .emacs file is incomplete." -Joshua Boyd