Dean Hoffman wrote in
:

On 6/26/11 7:25 AM, dpb wrote:
harry wrote:

...


None of the above mentioned devices rely on accurate frequency
control.


Well, my turntable does...

--

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is.
Spinning records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers were
there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said "It's
about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her though.

didja ever see the Two and a Half Men episode where Jake is spotting hot
chicks and calling out the time on his digital watch,not understanding the
concept of a clockface as a compass direction indicator.

"hot chick at 12:05".....
when the girl is at their 9:00. 8-)

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

daestrom wrote in
:

On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.


An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

all crystal timebases rely on constant temp for accuracy.
if the crystal temp varies,the crystal freq varies.That's physics.
Temp-compensated xtal oscillators(TXCO's) rely on opposing R and C temp
coefficients to compensate somewhat for temp variations.
KEYWORD;"somewhat". it's not 100% effective.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base
was not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom



These days,they use atomic clocks for precise freq reference.
like Rubidium oscillators,cesium,or quantum methods.

http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp50...-standards.cfm

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

Dean Hoffman wrote:
On 6/26/11 7:25 AM, dpb wrote:
harry wrote:

...


None of the above mentioned devices rely on accurate frequency
control.


Well, my turntable does...

--

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is.
Spinning records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers
were there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said
"It's about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her
though.

And if you'd said: "In thirty minutes it'll be a quarter to twelve"?

Pete C. wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers - anything that flashes
"12:00" when it loses power - may be just a bit off every second, and that
error can grow with time."

Most anything that "flashes 12:00" is going to be using a crystal
timebase and not care about power line frequency. They flash 12:00 since
when they loose power they need to have the time set again, not anything
to do with line frequency.

Dad built one of these kits in the early 1970s:

http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/sto...0669615117.jpg

Power outage causes it to display 88:88:88, and it's line locked, no
crystal. He said it started to be off by a few seconds a month,
starting a couple of years ago, and he suspects the power company.

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:13:34 -0700 (PDT), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:



Pete C. wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers - anything that flashes
"12:00" when it loses power - may be just a bit off every second, and that
error can grow with time."

Most anything that "flashes 12:00" is going to be using a crystal
timebase and not care about power line frequency. They flash 12:00 since
when they loose power they need to have the time set again, not anything
to do with line frequency.

Dad built one of these kits in the early 1970s:

http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/sto...0669615117.jpg

I knew several *engineers* who had the government buy these things for them
under the GI bill. They were "studying to become TV repairmen". Right.

Power outage causes it to display 88:88:88, and it's line locked, no
crystal. He said it started to be off by a few seconds a month,
starting a couple of years ago, and he suspects the power company.

Displaying 88:88:88 makes more sense than 12:00:00. Some will then start
incrementing - *bad* design.

The power company is likely more accurate than a crystal. The cumulative
error over a long period (month) should be zero. The error could also be the
zero-crossing detector getting noisy. Often it'll get much worse.

On 6/26/2011 11:56 AM, daestrom wrote:
On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.


An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base was
not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom


A lot of the test equipment from the big old name brand manufacturers
had crystal ovens inside for the time base circuitry when I worked a
bench tech in a repair depot 30 years ago. Like gold boat anchors and
just as expensive. :-)

TDD

On 6/26/2011 2:07 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Jim Yanik wrote:

"Pete wrote in
ster.com:


Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"Dean wrote in message
...
On 6/25/11 7:11 AM, wrote:
On Jun 25, 12:23 am, wrote:
I smell issues arising with this...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...HrMC9wYlOzOkUg
9wN... Kugkw?docId=371623ab59694aef9f0a02fe83faca8a

Erik

I have one issue already. The linked article comes up as
unavailable.


A short article he http://tinyurl.com/5vk4lc4

Does it really take that much effort to synchronize the grid's
frequency?


I have no idea, but according to the articles, yes.

I know that a clock motor will be affected as you change from 60
cycles, but digital? I thought they had something to do with a
crystal frequency oscillation. Or is that just watches?

"But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers - anything that
flashes "12:00" when it loses power - may be just a bit off every
second, and that error can grow with time."

Most anything that "flashes 12:00" is going to be using a crystal
timebase and not care about power line frequency. They flash 12:00
since when they loose power they need to have the time set again, not
anything to do with line frequency.

There are still a great many timing devices that rely on synchronus
motors and thus line frequency, and these mostly have just dials, such
as timers for sign and landscape lighting, water softener
regeneration, water heater timers and the like.


many of those "flashing 12:00" clocks DO need line frequency to count time.
Not all of them have xtal or ceramic resonators providing the 1 sec pulses
needed for the time count.

Nope, that was the very very early days of digital clocks with discrete
logic. Any device built in the last few decades that "flashes 12:00" is
microprocessor based and will not be using line frequency for reference.

Otherwise,a simple lithium coin cell or Supercap backup would retain the
timekeeping for a long time,and short power interruptions would not send
the clock back to flashing 12:00.

Adding such a backup adds cost to the device, which is why many do not
have such backup. Most actual clocks have a backup battery compartment
for use with regular batteries.


Actually,using line freq is usually more accurate than the xtal or ceramic
resonator timebases,over a long time frame. Unless an xtal timebase is
precisely tuned and temp compensated,they are not accurate over long times.

Sure, but the crystal is accurate enough for consumer use. Many of the
consumer devices don't even have AC power available to them to monitor
the line frequency of since they use wall wart or line lump DC power
supplies.


I used to do such calibrations.

I've soldered PTC thermister heaters onto crystals to provide
temperature stabilization. Most applications, including consumer timing
don't need that level of accuracy, particularly given that most such
devices have their time reset at least twice a year.

Many digital clocks listen to WWV NIST radio stations to set the time. I
bought such a clock years ago and just a few years ago I bought an
inexpensive Sony clock radio that had the same feature. I'm not sure if
it got its time signal from WWV or there is something now being
broadcast by radio stations or if it picks it up from a cellphone tower.
There seem to be a lot of things sending out time signals. Heck, if I'm
remembering right, POTS line caller ID does it too.

TDD

"Dean Hoffman" wrote in message news:iu79g2$oa7

stuff snipped

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is.
Spinning records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers were
there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said "It's
about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her though.

There's a big difference between the phrase "I brought my 45's to school"
spoken in 1960 and 2011.

(-:

--
Bobby G.

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:02:44 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"Dean Hoffman" wrote in message news:iu79g2$oa7

stuff snipped

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is.
Spinning records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers were
there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said "It's
about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her though.

There's a big difference between the phrase "I brought my 45's to school"
spoken in 1960 and 2011.

Then there was Russ Meyer in the '70s; forget about 38s, how 'bout her 44s?

wrote in message
news
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:02:44 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"Dean Hoffman" wrote in message
news:iu79g2$oa7

stuff snipped

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is.
Spinning records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers
were
there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said "It's
about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her
though.

There's a big difference between the phrase "I brought my 45's to school"
spoken in 1960 and 2011.

Then there was Russ Meyer in the '70s; forget about 38s, how 'bout her
44s?

And they were REAL 44's, not silicone. He did have an eye for the ladies.

--
Bobby G.

On 6/26/2011 7:42 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On 6/26/11 7:25 AM, dpb wrote:
harry wrote:

...


None of the above mentioned devices rely on accurate frequency
control.


Well, my turntable does...

--

I wonder how many people under 30 know what a turntable is. Spinning
records? Etc.
I was wandering around a museum a few years ago. Some teenagers were
there on a school tour. One asked me what time it was. I said "It's
about a quarter past eleven." That didn't register with her. She
apparently had no idea what that meant. 11:15 made sense to her though.

About 10 years ago, I was at a bowling alley when a little kid about 8-9
years old came up to the counter and asked the clerk if he could use the
phone to call home. The clerk reached under the counter, pulled out an
old Western Electric rotary dial desk phone and the kid was completely
dumbfounded. The kid had no idea how to operate the old telephone. ^_^

TDD

On 6/26/2011 19:56, The Daring Dufas wrote:

About 10 years ago, I was at a bowling alley when a little kid about 8-9
years old came up to the counter and asked the clerk if he could use the
phone to call home. The clerk reached under the counter, pulled out an
old Western Electric rotary dial desk phone and the kid was completely
dumbfounded. The kid had no idea how to operate the old telephone. ^_^

It's gone one step further now with kids and wired phones. Many kids
are unfamiliar with aspects of basic wired phones that we take for
granted such as taking the receiver off the hook before keying the
dialed digits, and placing the receiver back on the hook to end the
call. Where's the OFF button?

On 6/26/2011 10:23 PM, Bob wrote:
On 6/26/2011 19:56, The Daring Dufas wrote:

About 10 years ago, I was at a bowling alley when a little kid about 8-9
years old came up to the counter and asked the clerk if he could use the
phone to call home. The clerk reached under the counter, pulled out an
old Western Electric rotary dial desk phone and the kid was completely
dumbfounded. The kid had no idea how to operate the old telephone. ^_^

It's gone one step further now with kids and wired phones. Many kids
are unfamiliar with aspects of basic wired phones that we take for
granted such as taking the receiver off the hook before keying the
dialed digits, and placing the receiver back on the hook to end the
call. Where's the OFF button?

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

TDD

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:54 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 6/26/2011 10:23 PM, Bob wrote:
On 6/26/2011 19:56, The Daring Dufas wrote:

About 10 years ago, I was at a bowling alley when a little kid about 8-9
years old came up to the counter and asked the clerk if he could use the
phone to call home. The clerk reached under the counter, pulled out an
old Western Electric rotary dial desk phone and the kid was completely
dumbfounded. The kid had no idea how to operate the old telephone. ^_^

It's gone one step further now with kids and wired phones. Many kids
are unfamiliar with aspects of basic wired phones that we take for
granted such as taking the receiver off the hook before keying the
dialed digits, and placing the receiver back on the hook to end the
call. Where's the OFF button?

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

It took me a lot longer to figure out how to use a cell phone than it did a
rotary phone.

Smarty wrote:
On 6/25/2011 9:35 AM, George wrote:
On 6/25/2011 12:23 AM, Erik wrote:
I smell issues arising with this...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...lOzOkUg9wNC2jV

Kugkw?docId=371623ab59694aef9f0a02fe83faca8a

Erik

Consider the government dufas who is in charge:

"Tweaking the power grid’s frequency is expensive and takes a lot of
effort, said Joe McClelland, head of electric reliability for the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"Is anyone using the grid to keep track of time?" McClelland asked.
"Let’s see if anyone complains if we eliminate it." "

I guess he doesn't know about how clocks with synchronous motors operate.

I guess he is trying to top Obamas technically incompetent FCC
chairman who gave permission (after his boss got a big donation) to
proceed with a system that interferes with GPS?


http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/03/01/w...s-interference


http://preview.tinyurl.com/3fk5nu6


http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...-concerns.html


http://preview.tinyurl.com/678b4sy

Apparently Joe Mc Clelland is an electrical engineer. Thankfully not
another lawyer who is clueless about technology:

So, you're saying that an electrical engineer isn't influenced by the
same politics
that affects non electrical engineers?
Don't forget that about half the electrical engineers perform below
average ;-)

http://www.ferc.gov/about/offices/oe...mcclelland.asp

bob wrote:
Does it really take that much effort to synchronize the grid's
frequency?

To change the frequency they have to brake or accelerate the generator.
What I can't understand is which station is in charge of monitoring the
frequency and issuing commands to other power stations to speed up or
slow down?

Frequency variation is not a big deal. When you have a power outage, the
voltage and hence frequency go to zero in a haphazard way. So if line
frequency variation would cause chaos, power outage should cause many
times the chaos.

This is one of those cases where statistics mask the issue.
When the power goes out, it's obvious. I go around the house fixing all
the clocks
that are no longer accurate. Life returns to normal.

Not knowing whether the clock on the wall is correct is a much bigger
problem. How often do I have to get out the ladder to climb up and
reset the clock?

But we have been living with the ocassional power outage, I think the
minute line frequency variation is not going to do any worse than power
outage. In fact it probably won't affect anyone at all.

I'll bet there'll be lots of consequences.
The clock on my 40-year-old stove will be affected. And I ain't
replacing it...EVER.
I'll bet there are lots of legacy timepieces used in employee time clocks,
old buildings, etc.

The question is not, whether I'm able to find the correct time.
The question is, can I get accurate time from every time
indicator in view.

Knowing that most newer devices will not be affected is comforting
only to those who don't have legacy devices.

On Jun 25, 5:32*pm, aemeijers wrote:
On 6/25/2011 4:29 PM, HeyBub wrote:



harry wrote:

I think you will find that most timers are crystal controlled/
electronic these days with battery backup. *Electro mechanical devices
are disappearing.
In the event of mains failure, the correct time is maintained.

If you want an accurate clock in Europe, you get one that responds *to
a daily correction signal broadcast from various sources.

There are a LOT of things that depend on 60Hz. Since forever 60Hz has been a
standard piped into every establishment in the country. The article
mentioned traffic lights, security systems, and computers, but thousands of
other devices depend on a stable line frequency.

To let the frequency meander all over the place would be similar to letting
the National Bureau of Standards allowing the official meter to vary by one
or two millimeters per day.

On the other hand, this change will open a new business opportunity to
provide standard frequency power.

On any long-haul telecom circuit, like the ones the Internet runs on,
somewhere in the path for that circuit, is a rack in a basement
somewhere with a cesium clock. All the other racks that particular
circuit runs through, from point A to point Z, anywhere in the world,
have to be told to take that clock's word as gospel. When they screw up,
and have 2 different clocks in the path, sometimes it can get amusing if
they get out of synch.

--
aem sends...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Old saying: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two
watches is never quite sure.

On Jun 25, 5:22*pm, "hr(bob) "
wrote:
On Jun 25, 3:49*pm, " wrote:









Most anything that "flashes 12:00" is going to be using a crystal
timebase and not care about power line frequency. They flash 12:00 since
when they loose power they need to have the time set again, not anything
to do with line frequency.

Ah, no...

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. *On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. *(There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) *And implementation is dirt
cheap: *you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. *With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. *When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

* * *- Jonathan

You are the first poster to actually get it correct. *Thanks!!!

That hasn't been an accurate statement for quit some time. Whole
clocks can be built for the cost of the circuitry involved of syncing
the clock to to the power line. Oscillators built into the clock IC
are more than accurate enough to maintain accurate clock time over
years. Case in point, my trucks clock, 2003 Nissan bought in fall of
2002. Clock has never been set except by the dealer. It is now about
30 seconds off and it has always been about 30 seconds off per my
cellphone clock. I never bother correcting it for DST. The Design of
clocks Jonathan is talking about used an RC oscillator that was
synced to the power line. By design the oscillator was a little slow,
this made syncing it to the power line signal easier. Also have a desk
clock meant to run on a aaa or aaaa battery but I now have it wired
into 4 D cells in parallel. It has maintained accuracy for years
also.

Jimmie

On 6/26/2011 1:56 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:04:48 -0400, "Ed Pawlowski"
wrote:

[snip]

A digital clock is a counter. A plug-in clock counts the cycles of the
AC coming in. A battery clock uses a crystal oscillator.

A plug in clock with battery backup probably does NOT have a crystal,
but a cheap RC circuit. That's not very precise. Most seem to be fast
during power failures. If power fails from 6:00 to 7:00, the clock may
show 7:34.

"But wall clocks and those on ovens and coffeemakers - anything that flashes
"12:00" when it loses power - may be just a bit off every second, and that
error can grow with time."

Four devices with digital clocks in my house regularly gain 10-20
seconds/week, even when there are no power outages: (1)2 year old DVR
(non-TIVO) connected to an antenna for input (no cable/satellite/FIOS)
that has only a 30 second memory in case of power failure (probably a
small capacitor), 3 year old microwave oven, (3) 10 year old
clock-radio, and (4) 15 year old VCR with a 1 hr. memory in case of
power failure. All 4 are on different circuit breakers. I've had our
power company check our line for noise, voltage, and/or frequency
abnormalities and they found none. 3 other digital clock radios,
varying in age from 1-15 years old, some on the same and some on
different house circuits keep essentially perfect time. I use timer
recording on the VCR and DVR regularly and if I don't reset their clocks
weekly, I can lose the end of programs I record unless I always add time
at the end. No one has ever proposed an explanation or a serious fix
for this situation.

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:54 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones

or like the "cerebrum communicator" in "The Presidents Any list"?

and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

TDD
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"There's a sucker born-again every minute..."

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:56:56 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Many digital clocks listen to WWV NIST radio stations to set the time. I
bought such a clock years ago and just a few years ago I bought an
inexpensive Sony clock radio that had the same feature. I'm not sure if
it got its time signal from WWV or there is something now being
broadcast by radio stations or if it picks it up from a cellphone tower.

I've had clocks that do that, and clocks that PRETEND to do that.

There seem to be a lot of things sending out time signals. Heck, if I'm
remembering right, POTS line caller ID does it too.

TDD
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"There's a sucker born-again every minute..."

On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:46:01 -0400, Peter wrote:

[snip]

Four devices with digital clocks in my house regularly gain 10-20
seconds/week, even when there are no power outages: (1)2 year old DVR
(non-TIVO) connected to an antenna for input (no cable/satellite/FIOS)
that has only a 30 second memory in case of power failure (probably a
small capacitor), 3 year old microwave oven, (3) 10 year old
clock-radio, and (4) 15 year old VCR with a 1 hr. memory in case of
power failure. All 4 are on different circuit breakers. I've had our
power company check our line for noise, voltage, and/or frequency
abnormalities and they found none. 3 other digital clock radios,
varying in age from 1-15 years old, some on the same and some on
different house circuits keep essentially perfect time. I use timer
recording on the VCR and DVR regularly and if I don't reset their clocks
weekly, I can lose the end of programs I record unless I always add time
at the end. No one has ever proposed an explanation or a serious fix
for this situation.

Maybe you could leave one of those devices at a friend's house in
another city and see if it runs fast there too.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us

"There's a sucker born-again every minute..."

On 6/28/2011 4:38 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:54 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones

or like the "cerebrum communicator" in "The Presidents Any list"?

and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

TDD

There are always the computer implant augmented brains to contend with
in the future. I think Star Trek The Next Generation had some little
folks called Binars who were computer experts because they had all sorts
of computer parts implanted in their bodies. :-)

TDD

On 6/28/2011 4:41 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:56:56 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Many digital clocks listen to WWV NIST radio stations to set the time. I
bought such a clock years ago and just a few years ago I bought an
inexpensive Sony clock radio that had the same feature. I'm not sure if
it got its time signal from WWV or there is something now being
broadcast by radio stations or if it picks it up from a cellphone tower.

I've had clocks that do that, and clocks that PRETEND to do that.

There seem to be a lot of things sending out time signals. Heck, if I'm
remembering right, POTS line caller ID does it too.

TDD

I had the atomic clock for years which had a WWV radio receiver built in
and the newer Sony clock radio set its time in some mysterious way. ^_^

TDD

Okay, I've been good and have managed to keep myself under control.
But I am officially breaking down under the strain of respectability and
asking, when is the first time a person in the control room will turn to
another and ask: "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
I feel MUCH better now.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...

Okay, I've been good and have managed to keep myself under control.
But I am officially breaking down under the strain of respectability and
asking, when is the first time a person in the control room will turn to
another and ask: "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
I feel MUCH better now.

First it's Casablanca references, then Dan Rather. Do you think you're in
some arty-farty culture group?

(-:

I believe they said "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" when they beat him.
My guess? Timecops, pre-punishing him for the Bush ANG debacle.

Back to reality: What bothers me most about the frequency thing is their
attitude: "Let's just do it and see if anyone complains." Seems a little
cavalier.

--
Bobby G.


--
Bobby G.

"The Daring Dufas" wrote in message
...
On 6/28/2011 4:38 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:54 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones

or like the "cerebrum communicator" in "The Presidents Any list"?

and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

TDD

There are always the computer implant augmented brains to contend with
in the future. I think Star Trek The Next Generation had some little
folks called Binars who were computer experts because they had all sorts
of computer parts implanted in their bodies. :-)

Ah yes! I remember the stunning brunette Minuette (sp?) on the holodeck who
obviously found a materializer and a time machine and came back to Earth to
be the psychiatrist on the Lawn Order series of procedural police dramas.

--
Bobby G.

On 6/28/2011 8:13 PM, Robert Green wrote:
"The Daring wrote in message
...
On 6/28/2011 4:38 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:32:54 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

[snip]

Their kids are going to have tooth implant cellphones

or like the "cerebrum communicator" in "The Presidents Any list"?

and I'm sure one
of today's cellphones will be just as archaic to them. ^_^

TDD

There are always the computer implant augmented brains to contend with
in the future. I think Star Trek The Next Generation had some little
folks called Binars who were computer experts because they had all sorts
of computer parts implanted in their bodies. :-)

Ah yes! I remember the stunning brunette Minuette (sp?) on the holodeck who
obviously found a materializer and a time machine and came back to Earth to
be the psychiatrist on the Lawn Order series of procedural police dramas.

--
Bobby G.


I started reading SciFi books when when I was a little kid and I've been
hooked ever since. The episode was "11001001" and the babe
on the holodeck who captivated Riker was "Minuet". That episode first
aired in February of 1988, DANG! it's been a long time. ^_^

TDD

On 6/28/2011 5:45 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:46:01 -0400, wrote:

[snip]

Four devices with digital clocks in my house regularly gain 10-20
seconds/week, even when there are no power outages: (1)2 year old DVR
(non-TIVO) connected to an antenna for input (no cable/satellite/FIOS)
that has only a 30 second memory in case of power failure (probably a
small capacitor), 3 year old microwave oven, (3) 10 year old
clock-radio, and (4) 15 year old VCR with a 1 hr. memory in case of
power failure. All 4 are on different circuit breakers. I've had our
power company check our line for noise, voltage, and/or frequency
abnormalities and they found none. 3 other digital clock radios,
varying in age from 1-15 years old, some on the same and some on
different house circuits keep essentially perfect time. I use timer
recording on the VCR and DVR regularly and if I don't reset their clocks
weekly, I can lose the end of programs I record unless I always add time
at the end. No one has ever proposed an explanation or a serious fix
for this situation.

Maybe you could leave one of those devices at a friend's house in
another city and see if it runs fast there too.
Thanks for the suggestion Lloyd. However, with 4 digital clocks
behaving this way, I find it hard to believe that the clocks are at
fault. I suspect the power line is despite the power company's failure
to find problems here. Given that my power is provided by the infamous
PEPCO, I don't exactly have faith in their reassurances. This is the
same power company that caused me to waste $150 when I called them to
report an open neutral in their supply and they told me to hire an
electrician because they insisted that problem must be in my house.
(The electrician confirmed my diagnosis and when PEPCO repaired the
supply line, there wasn't a word of apology - or a refund/rebate of my
electrician's bill.)

In article , Peter
wrote:

This is the
same power company that caused me to waste $150 when I called them to
report an open neutral in their supply and they told me to hire an
electrician because they insisted that problem must be in my house.
(The electrician confirmed my diagnosis and when PEPCO repaired the
supply line, there wasn't a word of apology - or a refund/rebate of my
electrician's bill.)

Around here, IIANM, it would be common for the utility to send someone
out with the understanding that if the problem is not on their end,
you'll be billed for a service call, and then hire your own electrician
on top of that.

On Jun 26, 1:25*pm, dpb wrote:
harry wrote:

...

None of the above mentioned devices rely on accurate frequency
control.

Well, my turntable does...

--

Heh Heh. You can hear the difference between 60 and 60.5c/sec?

In ,
harry wrote:

On Jun 26, 1:25*pm, dpb wrote:
harry wrote:

None of the above mentioned devices rely on accurate frequency
control.

Well, my turntable does...

Heh Heh. You can hear the difference between 60 and 60.5c/sec?

The difference between 60 and 60.5 Hz is 14 cents, to the nearest cent.
There are 1200 cents in an octave, 100 in a semitone.

I have heard songs on the radio sounding sharp when they were played
2% fast - 34 cents. Those with good "perfect pitch" can hear if a whole
musical performance is 14 cents off.

In comparison between two slightly different tones, 4 cents is often
audible, 3 cents sometimes is. 3 cents is a frequency difference of .17%.
--
- Don Klipstein )

On Jun 26, 7:45*pm, The Daring Dufas
wrote:
On 6/26/2011 11:56 AM, daestrom wrote:





On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.

An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base was
not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom

A lot of the test equipment from the big old name brand manufacturers
had crystal ovens inside for the time base circuitry when I worked a
bench tech in a repair depot 30 years ago. Like gold boat anchors and
just as expensive. :-)

TDD

SHUT UP FOOL.
YOU TOO YOU BUG EYED HACK.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED.....

KEEP MESSING WITH THAT AND YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL SUE YOUR POWER COMPANY
FOR BURNT EQUIPMENT AND POWER OUTAGES
NOT TO MENTION YOU BEING FOOLISH, DEPRAVED AND INDIFFERENT ENOUGH TO
UNDER MIND THE NEED FOR STANDARD FREQUENCY IN GENERATED POWER FOR
HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT AND LIFELINES.
YOU FREAKING RETARDS !
PATECUM
TGITM

YOU CROSS POSTING NASTARDS - MAKE UP YOUR MINDS !
YOU PUTRID BUNCH OF REJECTS !
DON'T MESS WITH THAT !
TGITM

On 6/30/2011 7:18 AM, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
On Jun 26, 7:45 pm, The Daring
wrote:
On 6/26/2011 11:56 AM, daestrom wrote:





On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.

An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base was
not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom

A lot of the test equipment from the big old name brand manufacturers
had crystal ovens inside for the time base circuitry when I worked a
bench tech in a repair depot 30 years ago. Like gold boat anchors and
just as expensive. :-)

TDD

SHUT UP FOOL.
YOU TOO YOU BUG EYED HACK.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED.....

KEEP MESSING WITH THAT AND YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL SUE YOUR POWER COMPANY
FOR BURNT EQUIPMENT AND POWER OUTAGES
NOT TO MENTION YOU BEING FOOLISH, DEPRAVED AND INDIFFERENT ENOUGH TO
UNDER MIND THE NEED FOR STANDARD FREQUENCY IN GENERATED POWER FOR
HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT AND LIFELINES.
YOU FREAKING RETARDS !
PATECUM
TGITM

How are you important and relevant again? I'm so sorry I didn't remember
your contributions to society, besides you're a little
late responding to my post and me and everyone else has moved on
to something else. I rarely killfile anyone unless that person is
particularly nasty. Your posts are extremely sophomoric and consist
mostly of codswallop but there is sometimes a bit of entertainment
value in them so keep trying. ^_^

TDD

zzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:13:34 -0700 (PDT), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

Dad built one of these kits in the early 1970s:

http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/sto...0669615117.jpg

I knew several *engineers* who had the government buy these things for them
under the GI bill. They were "studying to become TV repairmen". Right.

I think a lot of them did it only to get free equipment or maybe a
monthly stipend. Actually I don't know if the GI Bill paid stipends
for courses by mail. One of my father's buddies mentioned ending up
with a bunch of Heathkits, including a big TV (big for the time), but
another friend went with a differnet company that furnished a line of
kits that weren't nearly as good. (something about the TV failing
every month, just after becoming very bright and smelling like tar).
My father didn't major in electronics or engineering but did manage to
design and build a digital clock from TTL chips. He hated its LED
display so much that he bought a second Heathkit clock.

On Jun 30, 9:03*am, The Daring Dufas
wrote:
On 6/30/2011 7:18 AM, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:





On Jun 26, 7:45 pm, The Daring
wrote:
On 6/26/2011 11:56 AM, daestrom wrote:

On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
*wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.

An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base was
not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom

A lot of the test equipment from the big old name brand manufacturers
had crystal ovens inside for the time base circuitry when I worked a
bench tech in a repair depot 30 years ago. Like gold boat anchors and
just as expensive. :-)

TDD

SHUT UP FOOL.
YOU TOO YOU BUG EYED HACK.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED.....

KEEP MESSING WITH THAT AND YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL SUE YOUR POWER COMPANY
FOR BURNT EQUIPMENT AND POWER OUTAGES
NOT TO MENTION YOU BEING FOOLISH, DEPRAVED AND INDIFFERENT ENOUGH TO
UNDER MIND THE NEED FOR STANDARD FREQUENCY IN GENERATED POWER FOR
HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT AND LIFELINES.
YOU FREAKING RETARDS !
PATECUM
TGITM

How are you important and relevant again? I'm so sorry I didn't remember
your contributions to society, besides you're a little
late responding to my post and me and everyone else has moved on
to something else. I rarely killfile anyone unless that person is
particularly nasty. Your posts are extremely sophomoric and consist
mostly of codswallop but there is sometimes a bit of entertainment
value in them so keep trying. ^_^

TDD

WHOS TRYING?
I AM THE GHOST WITH THE MOST, ENTERTAINING HAHN?
I JUST WANTED TO BRING THIS FACTOR INTO YOUR DUFY EQUATION.
SO YOU WONT HAVE TO TELL THAT TO THE FAMILY WHOS COMPONENT IS
DEPENDENT ON AN ELECTRIC POWERED LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM.AND EXPLAIN HOW A
FEW CLICKS OFF THE FREQUENCY WHERE NECESARY & THE CAUSE OF HIS OR HER
DEATH.
YOU BETTER MAKE SURE THE LOCALE HAS A AUTOMATED LINE CONDITIONER OR
POWER MONITOR / SWITCHER SO THE DROP WONT CAUSE ANY FLASH POWER
OUTAGES, LIKELY AND IMMINENT IN SOME PLACES.
BOOWAHAHA...OK FUNSTER?
PATECUM
TGITM

On 7/1/2011 3:04 AM, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
On Jun 30, 9:03 am, The Daring
wrote:
On 6/30/2011 7:18 AM, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:





On Jun 26, 7:45 pm, The Daring
wrote:
On 6/26/2011 11:56 AM, daestrom wrote:

On 6/25/2011 22:28 PM, Salmon Egg wrote:
In article
,
wrote:

Anyone who has a device with a crystal oscillator timebase knows that
the device has to be reset to the correct time occasionally. On the
other hand, plug-in devices that use the 60 Hz signal for the timebase
have been (up until now) essentially perfect since the signal has been
manually twiddled to make it so. (There is actually a 10 second
tolerance in the East, less in the West.) And implementation is dirt
cheap: you capacitively couple to the power line, use a Schmitt
trigger, and some divide-by-60 counters. With better performance at
less cost, using the power-line frequency as a reference is the
preferred method.

Thing become ambiguous in plug-in devices with "battery backup."
These devices do have crystal oscillators to ride out the power
outage. When the power is on they can either use the crystal
oscillator as reference, or the power line as reference, however the
device was designed.

I must have lucked out. For about $30 I bought a Pulsar wrist watch at
least 15 years ago. I estimate its stability as about one or two parts
in 10^7 as long as the temperature does not have extreme deviations. I
only reset it when I need to change for daylight savings time or for a
new cell. It is about four seconds fast this now. That may be because of
the cell having been in the watch for over two years now and it is
probably going to fail soon.

An interesting story, some of the early crystal watches had their
accuracy tied to maintaining the crystal temperature. By accounting for
the watch being on a human's wrist, the designers were able to design
for a specific temperature at the back of the watch.

In some old power plants, we had ovens to maintain the crystal
temperature of our frequency base. But curiously, the frequency base was
not used for controlling the generator (base-load plant), only the
oscillograph for transient plots.

daestrom

A lot of the test equipment from the big old name brand manufacturers
had crystal ovens inside for the time base circuitry when I worked a
bench tech in a repair depot 30 years ago. Like gold boat anchors and
just as expensive. :-)

TDD

SHUT UP FOOL.
YOU TOO YOU BUG EYED HACK.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED.....

KEEP MESSING WITH THAT AND YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL SUE YOUR POWER COMPANY
FOR BURNT EQUIPMENT AND POWER OUTAGES
NOT TO MENTION YOU BEING FOOLISH, DEPRAVED AND INDIFFERENT ENOUGH TO
UNDER MIND THE NEED FOR STANDARD FREQUENCY IN GENERATED POWER FOR
HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT AND LIFELINES.
YOU FREAKING RETARDS !
PATECUM
TGITM

How are you important and relevant again? I'm so sorry I didn't remember
your contributions to society, besides you're a little
late responding to my post and me and everyone else has moved on
to something else. I rarely killfile anyone unless that person is
particularly nasty. Your posts are extremely sophomoric and consist
mostly of codswallop but there is sometimes a bit of entertainment
value in them so keep trying. ^_^

TDD

WHOS TRYING?
I AM THE GHOST WITH THE MOST, ENTERTAINING HAHN?
I JUST WANTED TO BRING THIS FACTOR INTO YOUR DUFY EQUATION.
SO YOU WONT HAVE TO TELL THAT TO THE FAMILY WHOS COMPONENT IS
DEPENDENT ON AN ELECTRIC POWERED LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM.AND EXPLAIN HOW A
FEW CLICKS OFF THE FREQUENCY WHERE NECESARY& THE CAUSE OF HIS OR HER
DEATH.
YOU BETTER MAKE SURE THE LOCALE HAS A AUTOMATED LINE CONDITIONER OR
POWER MONITOR / SWITCHER SO THE DROP WONT CAUSE ANY FLASH POWER
OUTAGES, LIKELY AND IMMINENT IN SOME PLACES.
BOOWAHAHA...OK FUNSTER?
PATECUM
TGITM

Sorry, I have no idea what you are writing about except that you post in
all caps for some indecipherable reason.

TDD

The Daring Dufas writes:

How are you important and relevant again? I'm so sorry I didn't remember
your contributions to society, besides you're a little
late responding to my post and me and everyone else has moved on
to something else. I rarely killfile anyone unless that person is
particularly nasty. Your posts are extremely sophomoric and consist
mostly of codswallop but there is sometimes a bit of entertainment
value in them so keep trying. ^_^

WHOS TRYING?
I AM THE GHOST WITH THE MOST, ENTERTAINING HAHN?
I JUST WANTED TO BRING THIS FACTOR INTO YOUR DUFY EQUATION.
SO YOU WONT HAVE TO TELL THAT TO THE FAMILY WHOS COMPONENT IS
DEPENDENT ON AN ELECTRIC POWERED LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM.AND EXPLAIN HOW A
FEW CLICKS OFF THE FREQUENCY WHERE NECESARY& THE CAUSE OF HIS OR HER
DEATH.
YOU BETTER MAKE SURE THE LOCALE HAS A AUTOMATED LINE CONDITIONER OR
POWER MONITOR / SWITCHER SO THE DROP WONT CAUSE ANY FLASH POWER
OUTAGES, LIKELY AND IMMINENT IN SOME PLACES.
BOOWAHAHA...OK FUNSTER?
PATECUM
TGITM

Sorry, I have no idea what you are writing about except that you post in
all caps for some indecipherable reason.

Don't mind Pattycakes. He likes to huff and puff that he's important
somehow, but he's really just a coward hiding behind Roy's iPad. Upper
case is "shouting" and he thinks upper case makes him sound louder and
thus more important.

He also dances upon command. (Watch this: Dance, Pattycakes, dance!)

On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:41:02 -0700 (PDT), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:



wrote:

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:13:34 -0700 (PDT), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

Dad built one of these kits in the early 1970s:

http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/sto...0669615117.jpg

I knew several *engineers* who had the government buy these things for them
under the GI bill. They were "studying to become TV repairmen". Right.

I think a lot of them did it only to get free equipment or maybe a
monthly stipend.

Yep. That's why I said "Right.". They were IBM design engineers, not likely
to take up TV repair for a career but the "free" TV was worth their time. They
would sit around the office and "dry lab" the tests needed to get the next
part. There were a dozen of so of them, including my manager.

Actually I don't know if the GI Bill paid stipends
for courses by mail.

I think they did originally, then dropped that. Or it may have been means
tested.

One of my father's buddies mentioned ending up
with a bunch of Heathkits, including a big TV (big for the time), but
another friend went with a differnet company that furnished a line of
kits that weren't nearly as good. (something about the TV failing
every month, just after becoming very bright and smelling like tar).
My father didn't major in electronics or engineering but did manage to
design and build a digital clock from TTL chips. He hated its LED
display so much that he bought a second Heathkit clock.

I never liked digital clocks so never bothered making one.