On Sat, 2011-05-28 at 21:51 -0400, David Beierl wrote:
> At 09:32 PM 5/28/2011, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:
> >Yeah but what does it use for a frequency reference?
>
> Never taken one apart to see.  Could be a self-contained crystal
> oscillator with a frequency divider or a multivibrator  or an r-c
> oscillator with a ceramic resonator and freq. divider.  I'd give some
> odds it's a 555 timer though, it's low frequency and not
> critical.

A black box, then. Like the liver, it's a mystery.

"The liver, you see, is a large ugly mystery to us. If you've ever
eaten liver, you know what I mean. We're pretty sure today that the
liver exists and we have a fairly good idea of what it does whenever
it's doing what it's supposed to be doing."

From "The soldier who saw everything twice," chapter 18 of Catch-22 by
Joseph Heller

-- RJS