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Hey metamarty - i am more than willing to assit in beta testing considering i am busy building my FSBus boards at the moment which will service all required presses, pulls and flicks ;) AND lights, i.e. annunciators, 7Segs etc etc etc
Pop me a PM if i fit the bill.
Well!! After a long battle with time i managed to get 7 PC boards made for FSBus and the NGCOM. So i have 4 IOs, 2 x display 6pack and 1 x DO64. Enough to start with.
I finished the COM last night and got 95% with 1 display 6pack and realized i had 2 legged resonators and NOT 3 legged resonators. I went to electronics stores and no one had any. Lead time for the one place was NEXT YEAR!!!!!! Oh geeeees!!!
So far and so close to having some displays to test and then i have to stop.
Anyways, I got a USB to serial cable and then sorted the power for the COM board. Red light came on WHOOOO HOOOO then I plugged in the serial cable and yellow light came on YEAH BABY YEAH!! And then set the test jumper and the green light came on!!! But all my tests were errors. SO I checked the board about 3 or 4 times and found no problems. I changed the cable from com 5 to com 1 and nada. Changed back to com 5 nada. Changed to com 6 - nada. Changed to com 2 and PRESTO!!! Magic!!! It all works... but i have nothing to test with LOL - no other boards made yet!!
I'm still battling with the com card. I now have 4 oscilloscopes to track down the problem on this card. Looks like a short circuit in one of the wires going to the bus ports. It still does not work so I cannot complete the driver integration.
That is strange. Is it an old type or NG type COM board? 4 or 6 10pin slots? Where i found problems with a multimeter is the fact that the tracks are so close and where the 10pin headers solder on the board there was a little contact. Sorted that out but other than that I found no problems at all... pity i can't assist from where i am!!Quote:
Originally Posted by metamarty
It's a board with 10 pins slots. There is a problem in the send-line, which sends data to the PC. This line is not able to be pulled to 0 volts. Because of this, no data can be sent to the PC. The line always remains at 5 volts, so I suspect a short in one of the tracks near the 10 pins slot. As you describe, the solder on these slots are very close to the tracks and this is probably the cause of the short, but I have not yet been able to identify the exact spot.Quote:
Originally Posted by shearder
LOL yes i know 10 pins but does it have 4 or 6 x 10 pin headers? Mine has 6 x 10 pin headers. Anyways, i found a couple of shorts in mine at first using a magnifying glass and a multimeter. Wish i could assist you because it is such a PITA when you can't see where it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by metamarty
I have 6 x 10 too. I'm wondering how you were able to correct the shorts. Wherever I found the solder to be too thick, I tried using a small kitchen knife to separate the solder from the tracks, but so far no luck.Quote:
Originally Posted by shearder
OK same as mine. I have a solder remover which looks like a syringe and all i did was heat the solder and suck it off and then resolder if necessary. That's all really.Quote:
Originally Posted by metamarty
The problem i am having now is all tests are good but it doesn't seem to flash the chips on the display board for example. There are 6 of them all separate so it is a good test if one flashes then the others should and the COM board works BUT noe of the ATTINY2313s are flashing successfully. So i am checking the COM board again and i can't find any problems!!
Got my com board to work finally. The reset line had a short circuit with the send line. Had to remove a resistor. Now I got a working com board, but have the same flashing problem with the atmega chip. I'm trying to flash it with ponyprog, but it fails reading the security flags before flashing.Quote:
Originally Posted by shearder
hey meta - this may seem a stupid question - are you checking the settings for the security bits in the display manual(pdf) in docs folder? Also make sure your com port and serial cable are correct and set correctly.