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Kenwood DG 2630 Signal Gen

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thermo prince

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Picked up a 2nd hand DG2630 in a Kowloon mall recently.
Came without manual or any literature.
May be more advanced than what I needed. Would appreciate if anyone has instruction or operation manual in .pdf.

thanks in advance.
 
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Yes thank you, I am aware of powers of Google search and had found the 5 page sales "brochure" or datasheet already.

My wording was quite clear in saying instruction or operation manual.

Thanks anyhow.

Would appreciate leads from any others.
 
Have you contacted Kenwood yet?
 
Yes, contacted (old) Kenwood Corp HQ in Japan - it seems since 2007 , the company spun off some groups.

There's JVC-Kenwood now- a merger of both Japan Victor Corp & Kenwood, of the in-car and home entertainment fame plus the walkie-talkie, radio transceiver group still in Japan.

The instrument division appears to be owned / run by a US group called Texio in Maryland.
Making contact with them to see if they can help - a quick check of their website no longer shows any Signal Generators like the DG.

The 'pup' I bought was made in Japan, hard to tell if 1990's or this millenium. Actually what I needed was a function generator for some hobby work as a newbie -create some sine/square/triangle waves.
This appears like a more complex device more suitable for telecom/radio/tv engineer, that's why I'd also appreciate some advice from experts who may have used something like this.
 
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This unit isn't as sophisticated as you might think. It only outputs digital data, so to actually use it as a frequency generator you'd have to feed the AAC or PCM data into a tuner that can decode it (pretty much any surround system)

After reading the datasheet in detail the general operation doesn't seem that hard to work out, you simply switch modes (between AAC and PCM) and then switch program numbers to get the desired output which is shown in the tables provided at the back of the PDF.

Have you tried connecting the RS232 interface to a computer with a terminal program running and see what happens? The PDF doesn't say that there is any software that comes with the unit so that suggests that the RS232 interface may have a command line style interface (this is a guess), if you can get a command list from the unit that way it would shed a LOT more light on it's capabilities. There is nothing in the PDF that suggests that this device can output anything other than sinewaves or square waves of a fixed frequency. I infer this because there is no mention of the size of the PCM buffer, and the PCM table (the only part of this device that's programmable) shows no mention of any byte addressable area for inputing custom PCM step tables (which would be required for anything other than sine or square waves). The 'other' bit is likley to switch between sine/square (that is an asumption) the only really curious possibility is the 'user data' bit, but what that might mean is unknown unless you can get further information from either Kenwood or from the RS232 interface.

Even if you get garbage data from the RS232 link try capturing the hex data it spits out and post that after hitting enter in the terminal a few times, or trying to send a few letters or control codes. It might shed some light on the protocol that it uses.
 
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Thank you Sceadwian for the time to review and write such a detailed reply. Some good suggestions and I will certainly play with it some more and try those ideas.

Will let you know what else I come up with & /or if I hear back from Texio with any manual in the next week.

Once again , really appreciate you took the time to write some detail as you did. Sounds like you have years of experience in electronics field and kind enough to share with juniors. I enjoy passing on my knowledge and experience to young people coming up in industry also. It maddens me when I see the senior techs and engineers hide away the instruction and manuals from the junior staff in many companies that I visit.

Its a great and fascinating area - never to late to learn more myself but "wish someone had invented YouTube in the 1980's" - the amount of sharing and superb tutorials in fields of science and technology is just awesome.
In particular, Afrotechmods (featured elsewhere on this site) and AllAmericanFiveRadio. There are many more.
<< Mods , my apologies if not allowed to mention any names here, please delete if inappropriate>>
Super effort of personal time and effort to create & post such detail.

have a good w/e all.
 
thermo prince said:
Thank you Sceadwian for the time to review and write such a detailed reply.

You're welcome, and I apologize for my original post if it was perceived out of my intention, my intent was not to short or rude as I think you may have perceived me that way after viewing your response but I think I inferred a lot more information about the device from a quick glance at the PDF than you did and my assumption is of course poorly human in that I assume everyone understands what I think =)

I'm definitely curious about the RS232 interface. Even if you can't write your own PCM data this will still function as a general purpose square and sine wave generator when hooked up to any digital receiver, which are cheap and high powered now-days. If it turns out that you can actually write a PCM data table and step through it at a given rate this will be a much more useful device as it could be used as an arbitrary waveform generator.

My active practical experience is actually very low, I'm a theory child so to speak and Wikipedia and the Internet in general has raised me to whatever technical knowledge I have. I'm a hard science buff though so every theory or bit of information I'm aware of I've at least tweaked or experimented with a little bit.

Again sorry for any possible misunderstanding and good luck to you, please hook that thing up to a PC with a decent terminal program and let us know how it goes. Might go no where, but ya never know till ya try, and if this actually does have a PCM data table that can be stepped through you really have yourself a good piece of hardware. A decent modern digital audio receiver (meaning anything cheap you pick up off the side of the road) will have a decent possibility of being DC coupled to it's output (generally the sub line at the least) which could in theory turn this into a high precision mid power universal AC/DC power supply and signal generator.
 
Hi Sceadwian, Thank you once again for such a kind and detailed answer.

I will need some time to digest the useful information you have given - so please be patient and if I come back with any more 'basic' questions, please understand too.
You are on a way, way different level of expertise than I am.

Could you please give a little more point on the suitable Terminal Programme ... is this a 3rd party or something inherent in Windows already? An example or name would be great.
(I have run in-house TP's to communicate and flash load HVACR thermostatic controllers / uP in the past but that's about limit of experience )

Likewise for the audio receiver. Do you mean a AM/FM radio tuner or ? Once again, an example would be great so I could check on eBay or some local back street market for something that would fit the bill.

Once again, your advice to date is much appreciated.
 
This program is a forum favorite. Very simple, and full featured.

Just a tip, you may have to experiment with the baud rate settings, try 9600 8 data no parity and 1 stop bit.

I can't garuntee comptability with any specific receiver but it uses IEC standard codecs so it should work on any surround sound receiver that has an optical input, or even a coax input (looks just like an RCA connector), pretty much any home theater system has one so you could test it on your home unit if you have one.
 
Hi Sceadwian, thanks again.

Give me a little time to play with this after getting my USB,<-> RS232 hub adapter worked out on this Dell laptop.

Will try post a screenshot if/when I get comms going with it.
 
Hi Sceadwian, thanks again.

Give me a little time to play with this after getting my USB,<-> RS232 hub adapter worked out on this Dell laptop.

Will try post a screenshot if/when I get comms going with it.

Have not managed to communicate with the device yet. The Kenwood's got a 25pin RS232 C port - however my laptop SOCKET serial port to RS232 adapter is the 9 pin type . So I guess I need some sort of 25 pin to 9 pin converter/adpater now .... off to the local IT mall I go.

more later .....
 
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