Eric, Needless to say, it both sounds and looks pretty dang cool. Unfortunately, as a low-ranking tech nerd, this kind of stuff is outside of my scope and well above my pay grade.
Is the PIXIE chip a common point of failure in those machines.. many out of service for lack of one..? Clue a newb, would you? On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 7:40 PM, Eric Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > In development. Inspired by the Spare Time Gizmos STG1861, but not > based on that design. Rev. 0, not yet ready for production: > > https://www.flickr.com/photos/22368471@N04/sets/72157667299828132 > > It is 2.0 inch by 0.7 inch, with a 24-pin round-pin DIP header to plug > into a normal 24-pin DIP socket (vs. more the common square pins that > won't work with normal IC sockets). > > The surface-mount components were assembled onto the board by a > commercial service, which does not do through-hole, so I had to solder > the DIP header by hand. I had to make the pads for the DIP header > very small to squeeze the TQFP CPLD between the rows, so it turns out > to be unsuitable for hand assembly by novices. Since I am not willing > to do the hand assembly for other people, I'm not sure whether this > board would actually be worth selling; I might have too many customers > that aren't able to assemble it successfully. > > The CPLD programming is done by a "Tag Connect", which uses pogo pins > to contact the ten gold pads seen on the top of the board. There are > holes near those pads for the Tag Connect's steel alignment pins; > while there is enough clearance on the top of the board, I failed to > consider that the frame of the DIP header on the bottom of the board > would prevent two of the alignment pins from extending far enough. I > had to cut out part of the DIP header frame. > > The CPLD code has been written but has not yet been debugged. >
