So I finally got all my parts - the items from China came much sooner than
expected, with three parcels arriving at once on Tuesday. Yay! This included
the AM29F800BB-70EC chips, so I was able to build the first one using one of
those, although I also ordered a couple of MX29F800CBTI-70G from DigiKey which
seem like they might be a suitable replacement. I'm going to try building the
next one using one of those chips and report back on success or failure.
I built the first one last night and managed to possibly ruin one voltage
regulator (depending on how much heat they can take (opinions welcome), because
I bridged the three pads on one side and ended up having to remove it from the
board, which took a lot longer than I had wanted). Otherwise, it was a success
and is working properly.
Question for Stephen or others in-the-know: I installed the 4.9 software
release linked to from the 'Building a REX' wiki page - it's in the file 'Beta
R49 Dec 7 2013.zip' in Stephen's Member Upload Library area on club100.org in a
folder titled 'REX 4.9 Beta'. After installation I started to wonder if this
was the best version of 4.9 to use, since I remember reading that 4.9 included
a Y2K patch for the menu, and my menu still says 1900.
Looking on the 'REX Release 4.9' page on bitchin100.com, I see revision 236
(which says it's buggy) and revision 162, both of which date from 2015, leading
me to conclude they're newer than the one I installed (based on the date in
2013, since the version I installed has no revision number)... would these be
the releases with the Y2K menu patch? Is the version I installed buggy and/or
otherwise to be avoided?
jim
