SAM-III Construction Manual
See last page for document and copyright information, File: SAM-III Magnetometer Construction.doc, Page 29
If you continue to have problems, it also is possible that pins 2 and 3 on JS1 need to be swapped. Use a
digital multimeter set to the 20 Vdc voltage range to measure the voltages on the DB-9M connector.
Measure the voltage from
pin 5 (negative multimeter lead) to pin 2 (positive multimeter lead)
pin 5 (negative multimeter lead) to pin 3 (positive multimeter lead)
In both cases, the voltage should be in the range –6V to –12V. If not, remove power from the SAM-III
and try swapping pins 2 and 3 on the DB-9M connector or the 3-pin header connector. A good software
tool for troubleshooting serial ports is
PortMon for Windows
. It is free and available from
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896644.aspx
. See Appendix for some notes on using
PortMon. See also
Section XII
.
If the terminal emulator program (HypterTerminal) is configured properly and the serial port is wired
correctly, the HyperTerminal window should show a continuous stream of text “RS-232 OK”. The SAM-III
LCD shows
RS-232:
Connect PC and
Press F1 if data
is readable
When the serial port tests okay, press F1 and the following will flash on the LCD:
RS-232:
Test okay...
In HyperTerminal, press the DISCONNECT icon and close the program.
Go to the next test.
Test and Set the Real Time Clock
The real-time clock should be set to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) so that it operates on the same
time scale as other geomagnetometers throughout the world. In the United States, first go to
http://nist.time.gov/
to set your PC clock or watch, and then set the SAM-III time as described below.
For other areas of the world, go to
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
to find your location and
set your PC or watch.
Over the years, slightly different versions of the Initialization firmware have been used that limit the
range of years that could be set. The version used as of 16 February 2021 allows the year to be set
anywhere from 2020 to 2035. If you have the version of the Initialization firmware from 10 March 2011,
the date range was 2002 to 2020. However, both versions of firmware roll over correctly into later years.
For example, the 10 March 2011 firmware will correctly roll over to 2021 one minute after 23:59:00 on
31 December 2020.
When setting the SAM-III real time clock, the first line displays the Date and Time. The display format is
DD.MM.YY HR:MM:SS. In operation, the SAM clock display format is HR.MM. The day, month, year,
hour, and minutes can be set; the seconds cannot be set directly. In the procedures below, the field
