Frequency Counter

Now that we have a working counter and display the next thing to look at is the timebase. The timebase I built when first working on this counter is odd. It uses, for some reason, a 3.2768MHz crystal divided by (2^16 * 10n) to get a gate pulse which is a multiple of 1s, then further divided and decoded by a 3-to-8 decoder to generate pulses which latch the counter onto the display, and reset the counters. [Read More]

I started this peice of test equipment when I was about 15, I think, built the timebase with enthusiasm, the counting chain with a bit less, and then wondered how on earth I was to attach the 7-segment displays. Surely not one wire each?! So the project languished, and eventually got relegated to the shelf without ever being finished. All I had was the breadboard and two schematics which nearly corresponded with what was in front of me: [Read More]