"Ken Scharf" wrote in message
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Now that I see it might be possible I'm going to try
and make use of those 9954 and 9851 chips I got as
samples. The 9932 looks interresting too, with it's
low power. I also want to get a sample of the 9834,
now THAT's a low power chip, perfect for QRP.

Well, don't be too excited just yet. Even though the chips themselves might
be on a diet, they need a high frequency oscillator to get a decent waveform
out. Those little oscillator cans start to draw amazing amounts of current
when the frequency creeps up. Heck, the ocsillator on my 9850 DDS draws
more current by itself than an entire K1.

FAR circuits has a DDS board that is a little more complete than the NJQRP
dauhtercard, if that's what you are looking for, but the quality of that
board has been pretty bad. I know they are trying to improve it, but I
can't say I've been impressed with the results. On the other hand, they do
have prototyping boards that are quite nice. I picked up a few at a hamfest
this past fall that are pretty decent for the TSSOP DDS parts. And they are
a LOT cheaper than the individual adapters. However, their online catalog
doesn't have the selection they had at the hamfest, so maybe a call to them
would be in order.

The NJQRP daughtercard really does reduce the pain of all this, but both the
daughtercard and the FAR circuits DDS card are for the 9850, which is
getting a little stale. Sounds like you want to play with some newer stuff.

Also take a peek at some of the TI stuff. They have synthesizers and
"transmitter" chips that are very reasonably priced. Although they are
intended for very high frequencies, Steve Weber has made them work down into
more reasonable frequencies, and prescalers are only a couple of bucks.

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