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4-pin oscillators?

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I've scoured the interweb for a bit now, but I still can't find anything about using them. I'm thinking of using a 16.9344Mhz oscillator for my PIC (so I don't have to worry about crystals and such for now) but I can't find any documentation about what pins do what, even if I search the part number. It's one of those little metal box ones, ya know? Any ideas?
 
I would have thought it's easier to just use a crystal?, or choose a PIC with an internal oscillator? (assuming it's not critical?).

But the supplier you buy it from should be able to provide you connection details, basically just power, ground, and output.
 
Nigel Goodwin said:
I would have thought it's easier to just use a crystal?, or choose a PIC with an internal oscillator? (assuming it's not critical?).

But the supplier you buy it from should be able to provide you connection details, basically just power, ground, and output.

Well, I'm in a bit of a pinch economically, so here's two things: I don't have the capital to get another PIC (I know, I'm poooor!) and I got the oscillator(s) off of an old ancient-PCI MPEG decoder card. Kinda makes these things difficult.
 
ArtemisGoldfish said:
Well, I'm in a bit of a pinch economically, so here's two things: I don't have the capital to get another PIC (I know, I'm poooor!) and I got the oscillator(s) off of an old ancient-PCI MPEG decoder card. Kinda makes these things difficult.

Nothing wrong with being poor (most of us are!), if you're taking it out of a piece of equipment then study how it's connected first!.

What sort of PIC are you using anyway?.
 
Nigel Goodwin said:
What sort of PIC are you using anyway?.
It's a PIC16F876A. I'm just going to throw in some filler here just in case the Submit button wants to whine about message length.
 
Those oscillator modules are pretty power hungry, in a lot of cases they can end up eating more power than the PIC. Good if you want a nice solid clean external clock but. They're incredibly simple, just find a PDF for any old four pin oscillator nad use their pintout, it's going to be VCC GND OUT and enable. The enable line causes the OUT line to become tristated, I think it's active low? Could be wrong, easy to find out.
 
3v0 said:
I am not sure if all 4 pin crystals have the same pinout.
If the case is grounded to pin 7 it would be a good sign.

Pin Out Information, like an IC with pins missing.

1 Complementary output
7 Case, Ground
8 Output
14 Supply Voltage (Vcc)

3v0
This is the same as one that I've used except that mine does not have the complementry output on pin 1.
 
That fourth pin on all the oscillators that I've used, if internally connected, is the output enable pin, not a complementary output. So don't assume that all will be the same.

Dean
 
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