I have used a high-gain pre-amp in front of a counter before and simply contacted the crystal can and picked up enough signal to cause the counter to count. Alternatively one can often simply come close to one of the osc pins (w/o touching) and also get enough signal wwith an appropriate pre-amp before the counter. The other technique would involve an HF (some call them "shortwave") receiver tuned in and around 12 MHz while listening using a short piece of wire connected to the antenna input laying in the vicinity of the osc circuit. The procedure involves tuning for about a 1 KHz tone using the BFO (or Upper Sideband) and then zero-beating an external signal generator against this 1 KHz tone produced by the 12 MHz osc. Using this technique I have been able to measure the frequency of stations off-the-air to the limits of the generator I was using (which was capble of 1 Hz steps). RF Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Crowcroft" To: Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 5:12 AM Subject: [OT]: What Test Gear to measure xtal frequency to 1Hz > We are using a 12.000MHz crystal in a timer circuit. It has 2 x 33pF load > capacitors and the xtal is under the IC socket so the tracks to the uC are > 0.15" only. > > We want to measure the osc frequency to within 1Hz so we can adjust the > load cap in one leg. Can someone tell us what test gear we need to be able > to do this? > > regards, > > Peter Crowcroft > DIY Electronics (HK) Ltd > PO Box 88458, Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong > Factory: voice 852-2304 2250 Fax: 852-2729 1400 > M/F, 97 Fuk Wa Street, Sham Shui Po > Home: voice 852-2720 0255 Mobile: 6273 2049 > Web: http://www.kitsrus.com Email: peter@kitsrus.com > Yahoo Messenger 'peter5999' with webcam > Pay with Paypal: peter@kitsrus.com > ------------------------------------------------------------- > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.