...Of course, you cannot put it away until you've built it into a enclosure [..]
Actually I am indeed considering make a little enclosure for it as you suggest !
However any construction work has to be postponed until the garage is built, in a couple years all going well.
The living room is too much of a cluster fuck to do any work.
Unless you are thinking of an enclosure hastily put together in 10 minutes using cardboard boxes left overs, using scotch tape and a sharpie to draw the front panel " art work "....
...but I have more ambition than this, I want something decent, maybe even nice dare I say.
with a distribution amplifier and a nice low-noise linear power supply...
...Built using one of those transformers you couldn't decide to do with.
mnem
Hmmm... touché !
I didn't see that coming, but yes that would be a nice litle design and build exercise, and an excuse to mess around with these transformers and justify keeping them around... while keep the enclosure budget tight. Hmm I like the idea
OCXO takes only 5 Watts top, when cold, dropping to half that once warm, so any of my tiny crappy transformers should be good enough. Just need to find one with high enough a voltage. 24Vdc, add 3 volts for a standard 7824 or 3 pin adjustable regulator, that's 27Vdc. So I need to find a transformer with at least 19 Volts RMS, sustained under 210mA load.
Yeah, but now you see how scope creep invades everything. As soon as you start thinking about using this as a lab reference, you need a distribution amp.
This means a big enough enclosure for multiple BNC jacks, and now your PSU design needs to allow for powering that as well, even if you do take the lazy route and repurpose a ready-made CATV or Video Distribution amplifier module for the purpose... if you do decide to design the amp yourself, now you're jumping from one rabbit-hole into a new one with whatever CAD software suite you decide to go with... and before you know it, you're totally .
mnem
Oh I didn't think of the amplifier bit, uh.......... erm.... OK OK.... youplaboom...
I certainly don't want a huge box and a big fan... and I am no RF expert.
I don't know, I will see what I can do ?!
However I would think I would not need any fancy amplifier chip/ circuitry ?!
The output impedance of the oscillator is only 220 ohms and from the top of my head, the input impedance of my old counters, is much higher than that, so no need to amplify...
What I am more concerned about, is that each counter probably has different requirements about voltage levels and waveform (sine or square).
So the very first thing I would do, it dig out the old printed manual that I am lucky enough to have for every one of them, and compile all their requirements so I have an overview of what counter needs what, or can live with.
Then try to see if I can find a waveform and voltage level that can be compatible with all of them. If not, then make a few output stages/drivers that can be configured at will to produce whatever voltage levell of wave form that a particular counter wants.
Since the input impedance of the counters is not stupid low (not 50R I think), and it's only 1MHz we are talking about, which is at the reach of jelly bean logic chip I would think... then II could use just that.
Don't need any (voltage) amplification I would think since the OCXO puts out nearly 5Volts (4.85V or so). Don't need current amplification either for reasons explained above so... really I don't think it should be too difficult to come up with something that works ?!
Maybe I am being naive due to total lack of experience and knowledge in this domain... but I am willing to at least give it a try. Will be educational and a fun design exercise. So nothing to lose really, only fun and experience to be gained... it's all positive.
Yeah ! I quite like this little project ! I think it will be high on my list of projects once the lab is operational !!!