At the moment, the lesstif, ps, eps, bom, and gerber HIDs seem to be
working well.  Heck, I even designed a board with it!  Ok, so it was
only a tiny SMD to DIP converter so I could read an 8 pin eeprom, but
it worked!  Using the new PCB, I was able to load the symbols from the
library (had to tweak the DIP symbol to move the pins apart), run the
traces, export to postscript, print it on transfer paper, transfer it
to a blank board[1], etch it, plug the converter into my son's Radio
Shack Learning Lab, run a ribbon cable from that to my PC, wire it up,
hook up my parallel port oscilliscope on the laptop for debug, write a
little software, and voila!  I'm reading the eeprom.

What a hack.  No, what a *lot* of hacks.  But it all works!  And it
was all free.

Anyway, at this point the remaining "big" to-do items for the HID
project are to hook in the other interfaces.  Dan's offered to have a
go at the Gtk interface.  Anyone want to try adding the old Xaw
interface?  Or write a Win32 native interface?

Also, if people were waiting to try it out for usability feedback, now
is the time.

http://www.delorie.com/pcb/


[1] The funniest part of this was seeing the tiny toner letters
    floating about in the water when I soaked the board.  I think I
    need to NOT print the layer names on each postscript page ;-)
    (or at least print them further away from the board)

Reply via email to