The case is just a simple steel carcase which I bought some years ago for £1 if I remember correctly.
The insides I made myself from scraps of aluminium which I had on hand.
The front panel I made myself. The cut-out for the LCD was done with my lathe.
Put a milling cutter in the chuck and mount the panel on the vertical slide and you have a simple milling machine.
(A vertical slide is an accessory, not usually seen on the average lathe in normal use).
The idea behind having two output connectors is that one is for high frequencies (above 1MHz) and the other is for low frequencies (0 to 1MHz).
So far the low frequency output is not connected, I will get around to it one day.
The buttons:
Save - saves the displayed frequency and mode to EEPROM. The generator will then start with these conditions after a power on/off.
Tune Speed - press the buttons to cycle through three tuning rates.
Zero LSD - sets the digits to the right of the cursor to zero. Pressing the button in the picture would set the display to 13.546000 Mhz.
Cursor Left/Right - moves the cursor left or right. Turning the tune control will then change the frequency at the cursor position, the digits to the right of the cursor will bot be affected.
Tune/Set - when set to
Tune (shows T at the left side of the display) the frequency will tune up/down through the whole range of the generator. The tuning steps will be determined by the cursor position. In the picture the generator will tune in 1kHz steps.
When set to
Set (shows S at the left side of the display) tuning will be restricted to the digit at the cursor position. In the picture the generator will tune from 13.560875 to 13.569875Mhz. The purpose of this is to be able to just set individual digits to quickly set a wanted frequency without having to tune through the whole range of the generator.
Mmm.... I think I have just gone half way to writing an operation manual for it!
The label for the buttons was made using MS Excel and stuck to the front panel using clear nail varnish.
Shame about the lines through the Zero LSD and Tune Speed boxes, I did not notice that error until much later.
I'm thinking I can set the tuning words with dip switches or similar
You may change your thoughts on that when you get around to trying it!
It would be far easier to have a PIC read a switch and then send the tuning words to the AD9850.
JimB