better 4046 PLL

Someone has to keep you on your toes! ;-)

There's also an HC7046, also claimed to be better than the 4046, also has a crappy oscillator, and the phase detector is no better than a 4046 with a 1 meg resistor to ground from the PD output.

All you have to do to clean up PD2 is pull the servo point ~10 ns away from the deadband. Compared to using a boutique part, that's a win.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

pay

show

I was not their employee, I was not salaried, and the brainstorming for the atom probe was all for free. I even paid my own air fares. Madison Wisconsin is kind of neat.

You like being taken advantage of? Enjoy!

Patents are just an expensive, time-consuming license to litigate, even if you can somehow find out that someone has copied a design. It's more time-efficient to just keep designing better stuff and keep ahead of the competition. Besides, if any of my customers discovered that someone had copied our designs, they'd blackball them. It has happened.

A lot of the stuff we do would be very hard to reverse engineer anyhow, to fight for half of a niche market. And if it happened once in a while, it's not a disaster. Like I said, just keep ahead of them.

I have a couple of new ideas that I may just publish in the public domain, so somebody else can't patent them. This new "first to file" thing is outrageous. It's a consequence of the US Patent office being a profit center, not a public service.

I do it all the time, I just don't announce it, so virtually no one notices.

There's been a recent significant change that I posted here, multiple times, but no one has noticed, which proves my point.

At least we agree on one thing ;-) ...Jim Thompson

I don't think that posting to SED is adequate public disclosure. The legal requirement is that it be published in "a printed publication." A couple of outfits will do that, for around $100.

Extraordinarily lucky.

I think it's any public "forum". ...Jim Thompson

Then why would these people charge $100?

The P.T.Barnum effect ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

That may explain why Gardner's "Phaselock Techniques" doesn't mention the MC4024 and MC4044, which were around when the book was published.

I've mentioned before that I found that to be an unexpected omission. Granting Jim's winning personality and irresistible charm, it has to be the only possible explanation.

John, do you have any more information on the original RCA 4046 design?

Did they also do the 4044? Do you recall any dates when they were on the market?

Any pointers to manuals or app notes?

Any information you can give would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

JK

According to the 1980 RCA COS/MOS Data Book, the CD4044 was a "three-state quad latch."

There must be databooks online somewhere. If not, I can scan the CD4046 part of the book, which is 6 pages and a lot of data, including an image of the mask.

The CD4046A is listed in the 1975 RCA Solid-State Devices Manual too.

MC4044 was the PFD, concept proposed by me, and digitally implemented by Ron Treadway.

The MC4024 was my first VCM.

See my website for links. ...Jim Thompson

The RCA 4046 seems to have been half-inspired by Motorola' MC4024 oscillator, designed by our very own Jim Thompson, who also claims to have had a hand in the other half of the inspiration, the Motorola MC4044 phase detector chip.

Both the Motorola parts were TTL, and putting them together in one chip would probably have produced a device that ran too hot to work. Motorola certainly paired them up in its publicity material, and I used them as a pair back in 1972.

Thanks very much for your help. I am trying to track down examples of the phase-frequency detector prior to Ron Treadway's 1971 patent:

Dobbie's 1961 patent looks very similar:

I understand there was a British radio receiver from this time frame that used a similar configuration, but I have so far had no luck in locating any more information.

The phase-frequency detector is probably one of the most important single inventions in frequency synthesis, and it is buried inside a great deal of conventional technology. Nobody knows it even exists. I'd like to learn more about who first invented it, where it was used, and what other inventions and technological developments resulted.

Thanks again for your help.

JK

Floyd M. Gardner's book "Phaselock Techniques" ISBN 0-471-04294-3 for the s econd edition, published in 1979, is careful to distinguish between "multip lier" and "sequential" phase detection circuits. Within the "sequential" ca tegory he distinguishes between simple flip-flops and the MC4044/CD4046 cir cuit.

The first is referenced back to a paper by C.J. Byrne, "Properties and desi gn of the Phase-Controlled Oscillator with a Sawtooth Comparator", publishe d in March 1962 in the Bell System Technical Journal, volume 41, pages 559-

There are suggestions that Floyd M. Gardener didn't like Motorola - Ron Tre adway's 1971 patent should have had precedence, if Gardner knew about it, a nd presumably Treadway's patent was carefully formulated to get around what ever it was that Byrne had published.

The PFD edge sequence scheme and charge-pump was my conceptual idea, and was implemented in digital by Ron Treadway back when we were both employed by Motorola in the mid '60's and were trying to make our

...Jim Thompson

Why aren't you listed on the patent as a co-inventor?

Treadway did cite Dobbie as prior art.