Hi,
First post here. I'm a software guy but have been hacking away on Arduino's for the last couple of years and have been leaning more and more towards hardware. I'm also a Ham, so RF projects are what interest me most. In summary, I know enough to be a menace with a soldering iron but that's about it.
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I have a collection of HP test equipment (5245L Counter, 3325A Function Generator, 8640 Signal Gen) and for fun I want to use a rubidium standard (at 10MHz) as my lab standard. Problem is the 4245L requires 1MHz, the 3325A can use 1 or 10MHz, and the 8640 needs 5Mhz for the external timebase.
I've built a splitter circuit using a 4013 flip-flop (div / 2) and a 4017 counter (div / 10). They are running at 9v to support the relatively high working frequency (10MHz). Works great, but I need 3V p-p to trigger the logic gates. The rubidium puts out 1v p-p. Reading online, I can open up the rubidium box, and get a 5v p-p square wave, but I'd like to also be able to use the 5245L as an alternate standard, as the crystal oven seems to be fully working and is probably more accurate than I will ever need. The 5245L also puts out 1v p-p on the 10MHz reference output.
My question is, what approaches can I take to make a 1v signal trigger the logic chips? I've tried to build a single transistor pre-amp, but my parts box doesn't currently have anything that wants to run at 10MHz. Before I run off to the parts store, is a pre-amp the only approach? Or is there an alternative I should be looking at?
My preference is for a solution that involves off-the-shelf discrete components rather than something I'll need to mail-order.
Cheers,
Michael