I finally found the document that I based the 7490 clock that I built off of. Nothing like the process of moving to uncover lost items. The clock that I built had one main variation in that it did not use the 60Hz from the wall as a frequency reference. Instead it used a series of 7490 chips to divide down from 10 MHz to 1Hz to drive the clock portion. I did this with the foresight that at some point I was going to use a good crystal oscillator such as a TCXO, temperature compensated crystal oscillator or an  OCXO, oven controlled crystal oscillator. These are readily available in 10MHz versions. Another plus is that WWV out of Fort Collins Colorado transmits on 10MHz using a signal derived from a cesium oscillator so the oscillator can be checked and calibrated ( mostly ) against their signal easily by using a shortwave receiver.

Schematics for the version of a 7490 TTL Chip Clock that I built

I was able to scan the original document  and OCR it back to an electronic copy and published the text with the diagrams on this post. The original scan is at the bottom of this post. I downloaded it in 2007 from the How Stuff Works site. Unfortunately the well written article has disappeared from the Internet entirely or I would have just provided a link to it on this site. It has been put it up here for reference for anyone curious or wanted to build a clock out of 7490’s that use a 60Hz input. If this article reappears on-line, I would just link to it. If someone sees it somewhere, please let me know.

Circuit Diagram

Here‘s a circuit diagram tor the power supply and time base.

As we saw in the article on electronic gates,the power supply is the most difficult part.

To create the rest of the clock you will need

•  At least four 7490 or 74LS90 chips
• At least two 7447 or 74LSA7 binary to 7—segment converters
• At least 20 resistors for the LEDs in the 7—segment displays ( 300 ohms would be
  fine.)
• Some normal LEDs
• At least two common-anode (CA) 7—segment LED displays (Jameco; part #172088 is
  typical)
• Breadboard, wire. etc.

The 7490 is a decade counter. Meaning it is able to count from 0 to 9 cyclically, and
that is its natural mode. That is QA, QB, QC and QD are 4 bits in a binary number, and
these pins cycle through 0 to 9, like this

QD QC QB QA
 0  0  0  0
 0  0  0  1
 0  0  1  0
 0  0  1  1
 0  1  0  0
 0  1  0  1
 0  1  1  0
 0  1  1  1
 1  0  0  1
 1  0  1  0

You can also set the chip up to count up to other maximum numbers and then return to
zero. You “set it up” by changing the wiring of the R01,R02 R91 and R92 iines. If both
R01 AND R02 are 1 ( 5 volts ) an either R91 OR R92 are 0 ( ground ) then the chip will
reset QA, QB, QC and QD to 0. If both R91 and R92 are 1 ( 5 volts ), then the count on
QA, QB, QC and QD goes to 1001 (9). So

To create a divide-by-10 counter, you first connect pin 5 to to +5volts and pin 10
to ground to power the chip. Then you connect pin 12 to pin 1 and ground pins 2,3,6 and
7. Run the input clock signal ( from the timebase or a previous counter ) in on pin 14. The output appears on QA, QB, QC and QD. Use the output on pin 11 to connect to the next stage.

To create a divide-by-6 counter, you first connect pin 5 to to +5volts and pin 10
to ground to power the chip. Then you connect pin 12 to pin 1 and ground pins 6 and
7. Connect pin 2 to pin 9 and pin 3 to pin 8. Run the input clock signal ( from the
timebase or a previous counter ) in on pin 14. The output appears on QA, QB and QC. Use the output on pin 8 to connect to the next stage.

Creating the Second Hand

Knowing all of this, you can easily create the “second hand” of a digital clock. It looks like
this

In this diagram, the top two 7490s divide the 60-Hz signal from the power supply down by a factor of 60. The third 7490 takes a 1-Hertz signal as input and divides it by 10. Its four outputs drive normal LEDs in this diagram. The fourth 7490 divides the output of the third by 6, and its three outputs drive normal LEDS as well. What you have at this point is a “second hand“ for your clock, with the output of the second hand appearing in binary. If you would like to create a clock that displays the time in binary, then you are set! Here is a view of a breadboard containing a divide-by-10 counter. a divide-by-6 counter and a set of LEDs to display the output of the counters in binary.

Displaying the Time as Numerals

If you want to display the time as numerals, you need to use the 7447. Here is the pinout
of a 7447, as well as the segment labeling for a 7—segment LED.

You connect a 7447 to a 7490 like this

Provide +5 volts on pin 16 and ground on pin 8 to power the 7447 chip
Connect QA, QB, QC and QD from a 7490 to pins 7, 1, 2 and 6 of the 7447,
respectively.

Connect 330-ohm resistors to pins 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 15 and 14 o0 the 7447,and
connect these resistors to the a, b, c, d, e, f and g segments oo the 7-segment
LED

Connect the common anode of the 7-segment LED to +5 volts

You will need to have the pinout for the specific LED display that you use so that you
know how to wire the outputs of the 7447 to the LEDs in the 7~segment device. ( Also,
note that the 7448 is equivalent to the 7447 except that it drives common-cathode
displays. Ground the common cathode of the LED in that case.)

V0u can see that by extending the circuit, we can easily create a complete clock. To
create the “minute hand’ section of the clock, all that you need to do is duplicate the
“second hand” portion. To create the “hour hand“ portion, you are going to want to be
creative. Probably the easiest solution is to create a clock that displays military time
Then you Will want to use an AND gate (or the R inputs or the 7490) to recognize the
binary number 24 and use the recognizer to reset the hour counters to zero.

NOTE: You can dispense with the and gate and simply wire the “2” line QB of the
hours-tens counting 7490 and the “4” line ( QC ) of the hours-ones counting 7490 and
connect BOTH to the same reset line (R1 or R2 )respectively on each of the hours 7490s.
In this manner when a 24 count occurs a reset is applied to both R1 and R2 on both hours
chips simultaneously, resulting in a reset to zero for both.

The final piece you need to create is a setting mechanism. On a breadboard, is is easy
to set the clock – just move the input wires to drive higher frequency signals into the
minute-hand section of the clock. In a real clock, you would use pushbuttons or switches
and gates to do the same thing.

If you happen to take your bedside clock or watch apart, one thing you will notice is that
there are probably not 15 TTL ICs inside. In fact, you may not be able to find a chip at all
in most modern clock or watches, all of the functions of the clock (including the alarm
and any other features) are all integrated into one low-power chip (in a watch, the chip
and display together consume only about a millionth of a watt.) That chip is probably
embedded directly into the circuit board. You might be able to see a blob of black plastic
protecting this chip. That one tiny chip contains all of the components we have discussed
here.

Scanned Original Document