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Subject: 
Re: RCX has a fast clock, was Re: Rolling ball clock revisited
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.technic, lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Wed, 8 Dec 2004 14:08:54 GMT
Viewed: 
173 times
  
I suppose that this problem comes from bad capacitor loading of the crystal used
on RCX. Crystals need to see some capacitance to oscillate at the right
frequency, generally in the 10 to 30pF range. Even if PCB traces themselves
bring some capacitance, there is no added caps on RCX PCBs (see
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=38746), this should be enough to
explain the problem.

As David Ward suggested me, the oscillator is most probably equipped with a
ceramic resonator with built-in capacitors. This explains the low precision of
the clock (tolerance for ceramic resonators is in the 1% range while for
crystals it is in the 0.01% range). Resonators are cheaper too ;o)

Philo



Message is in Reply To:
  RCX has a fast clock, was Re: Rolling ball clock revisited
 
Hello dave, (...) A made an experiment this night using a RCX 2.0, the clock was fast by about 10s per hour. I suppose that this problem comes from bad capacitor loading of the crystal used on RCX. Crystals need to see some capacitance to oscillate (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.technic, lugnet.robotics)

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