A 100 hertz square wave source

for Experimenting and other Hobby Uses.

Chapter One The search for a replacement

As many Experimenters and Hobbyists know, the MM5369EST was the
standard one-chip solution for a 100 hertz square wave source. It
accomplished this miraculous event by dividing a 3.58 (actually 3.579545
MHz for those obsessed with accuracy) MHz crystal by seventeen. This
most holy of devices gave two outputs, one of the original crystal frequency
and the other the 100z square wave source.
Unfortunately, National Semiconductor ceased to produce this holy device
sometime in the late 1990's. I have not been able to find a replacement for
this holy device for the last twenty years,and believe me, I have looked.
Since my search for my personal holy grail was in vain, I've decided to
create several substitutes.

Chapter Two The candidates

In my opinion, there are two candidates for the position of the most holy
device. One is microcontroller based and the other is not. Briefly, the
microcontroller based involve a serious expenditure of time and money. One
must decide whether or not to use a microcontroller from ATMEL or
MICROCHIP since these are in my opinion the two most popular
microcontrollers in use today. Since I wanted a quick and reliable 100 hertz
square wave source, I've decided to go with the non microcontroller based
solutions.

Chapter Three The non microcontroller based candidate

The successor to the most holy device is a dual output cmos clock oscillator
made by ECS International. It is called ECS300CX-128. It produces an
100KHZ signal from an internal 12.800 MHz crystal. It has to be
programmed via three pins to give the 100 KHZ signal which then can be
divided by one thousand to give the 100 Hertz square wave source.
Chapter Four The CMOS one thousand dividers
There are four candidates for the one thousand dividers.
The first candidate is the RDD104 a Selectable four decade cmos divider.
It is programmed via two pins for the one thousand division. If one were to
use this candidate with the ECS300CX-128 one would have a simple two chip
solution. Unfortunately, This device is only available in some quantity from
littilediode.com a company based in Great Britain.
The second candidate is to use four 74c90 decade counter. This has the
advantage of being reasonably available from several hobby IC sources. It
has to be connected in a certain manner, which can be found in the links
section . But it is not a two chip solution.
The third candidate is to use three 74hc390 configured as decade counter.
This has two counters within, one is divide by five and the other is divide by
two. It has to be connected in a certain manner, which can be found in the
links section .This is not a two chip solution and is reasonably available from
several hobby IC sources.
The fourth candidate is to use four cmos logic 4017 decade counter. This
counter just needs to have it's input connected to the output of the
ECS300CX-128 and then one uses the carry output as the divide by ten
output. The source in the links section should give one information on how to
use the divider, but it will require the use of four devices and is definitely
not a two chip solution.

Chapter Five For further information

Here is a list of place to go for further information:
1. CMOS Cookbook Second Edition by Don Lancaster,Revised by Howard
M. Berlin. Published by Newnes, ISBN-10: 0-7506-9943-4, ISBN-13:
978-0-7506-9943-3.
2. ECS data sheet- http:www.digikey.com Part numberXC1171-ND.
3. RDD 104 data sheet-
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheet/lsi/RDD104.pdf
Chapter Six Disclaimer
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