Omega 1325 De Ville comparison with 1320 circuit

That chip would be sooo easy to replace with a modern micro-controller. Too bad these do not fall into the low end lots. When I am not playing with mechanical watches or working in the garden, I work with such electronics. Even on pipe organs little itty bitty chips are used.

Somehow I do seem to be accumulating some electronic watches. Never Omega. I did recently get a Tissot with a micro generator. Have not looked at it or ordered a new supercap. Got distracted seeing If I could extract images from the advertising CD ephemera.

The parts list for the 1325 has a different part number for #9150 so a 1320 may work, or it may not.

From the 1325 tech guide.

AVR Tiny series. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/attiny85 I like the Tiny25/45/85 these come in an 8 pin SOIC package. Look for the pico power variations that run on 1.8V. I have a bunch of COD (Chip On Die) samples. Those really require reflow as they are bga. This sort of thing I think is what is under the conformal coating. I was able to solder some tiny wires onto one and read the device signature.

The tricky part would be figuring out how to mount it as the pinout will differ. The main uses for such chips are battery monitors and micro motor control. So they have a phased PWM. I used the Tiny25 to control pipe organ valves. So power is not an issue.

AVR chips are easy to program. There is an environment called Arduino. The small chips like the Tiny85 do not have a bootloader, so one does have to flash them without a serial port. The reason there is 8K of memory in that is that modern 'coders.' can only work with C++ or python.

Microchip now owns the brand. I really liked them when they were owned by Atmel. This was a classic case of the larger fish buying the competition. Last I heard they had not buried the designs. I think they really did want the ultra low power technologies.

This is an area I really want to experiment with. Seems others may want to as well as the Omega watches and parts seem to be on the high side of low end and over 100 Bucks. I did find some ladies Tag/Heuer watches to play with. These seem to have been washed up on a beach.

In a fit of madness I purchased over a pound of Goodwill junk to experiment on. That is more to make some sort of diagnostic tester. Or to see if one of these uCs can power the microstepper. The data sheets and references imply that using a standard voltmeter can put too much current across the coil when measuring the impedance. These are powered with 9V batteries and can easily light a LED.

Esslinger has a good section of tech documents
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold...5azU2eFk?resourcekey=0-wkmwmF0oWowPqOMdm-03fA

WatchGuy is my goto place for searching datasheets
https://watchguy.co.uk/cgi-bin/files?subdir=Omega&dir=Technical Manuals&action=documents

The links above are pointed at the omega section. Use the back button to see other calibers.

Here is a screenshot of an ETA datasheet with the voltage guides.
I am not sure where I saw the info on measuring the coil resistance. The last line may be what I was remembering. Somewhere I should have a guide to servicing Quartz watches. Might be in one of my books or magazines. Looks like I downloaded this back in January when I got the TAG/Heuer movements. (Where does the time go.) Addicted to information overload -- I tend to get distracted by what ever quickens me the most. Interruptions can cause delays of years or even decades of delay.

What I should be doing is troubleshooting some Ethernet interfaces on pipe organ boards. The modern NIC (Network interface controller) chips have built in diagnostics. When properly coded they can estimate where the break in the wires are by measuring the back reflections.

Something similar could be done with coils (which can act at anteni.) I have seen RF testers for Quartz watches. Not sure how often breaks in the coils occur. In motors these are usually close to one terminal or the other.

ESD (Electro Static Discharge.) is the bane of electronics. My first 'real.' job was repairing Apple /// computers. These were shipped almost 100% DOA. Amazing that Apple recovered. The Apple ][ did not use the CMOS SMT chips. Apple learned a lot about the issue. Why those blue grounding mats and wrist straps are now used. Most modern chips have protection diodes on the terminals.

Cold solder joins are also another issue. Might be interesting to reflow the chips on a defective module. Internally the wire die bonds can sometimes corrode. The packaging is to keep the light out. This can be hydroscopic. Early transistor suffered from and oxide called the purple peril after the oxide found. Lead free chips can suffer from something called tin whiskers. The best solder does remain lead which is exempt in life critical areas.

Most of this is academic. I doubt anyone outside of pure research is going to decap a watch chip and diagnose the failure or clone it. Much more profitable to do such with automotive or vintage game machines (Aka Jeri Ellsworth.)

Chips are basically stained glass precisely manufactured with a lithographic printing process. Quite simple, once one understands how they work. Tricky parts is working in a filtered environment with really pure materials.