Cooked Protoboard
blittled
Posts: 681
I may have literally cooked my protoboard. I like most electronic hobbyists have cooked their fair share of components and this may be my newest addition to my "failed" museum.
Here is my tale of woe I decided to power my protoboard with both an adapter and batteries. I realize that a isolation diode should be put in series with the battery input but I didn't want to deal with the typical .7 volt drop through the diode shortening the usage of 4 AA batteries. So I put a switch in instead of a diode. You guessed it, Murphy's lay struck. I accidentally had the battery switch on and the 300 mA adapter plugged in for about 3 hours. Let's just say I didn't need a heater running that night. The batteries melted the battery holder and scorched the wood board it was mounted on. Luckily I didn't start a bonfire in my living room. So as a warning to others DO NOT directly connect a battery to a adapter input unless you want to break out the hotdogs and sing campfire songs around the bonfire that was your circuit.
I tried testing the board by downloading Prop Dos into the eeprom the next morning. Everything went ok. I then turned it on later in the day and got no response. The Prop Tool identified the propeller ok and I could download to RAM but I got a "EEPROM programming error on COM6" when trying to download to the eeprom. I tried a couple of things but nothing worked because I have seen this error before when adding some headers to the I2C bus and found out I shorted the bus. I finally decided to remove the on board eeprom since I assumed it was bad and replaced it with a dip eeprom. I did tie A1 through a 10k resistor to ground so I could add a card edge connector in the future for Hydra cards. I still get the error and I triple checked my wiring.
As luck would have it I have a second unused protoboard, every electronic hobbyist should have backup electronics. My question to the forum is what to do next. Try to see what still is wrong or mark the board as a toasted pop tart and use the second board. Thanks in advance for your advice.
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What electronics need - MORE POWER!!!!!!!
Post Edited (blittled) : 10/25/2008 3:29:23 PM GMT
Here is my tale of woe I decided to power my protoboard with both an adapter and batteries. I realize that a isolation diode should be put in series with the battery input but I didn't want to deal with the typical .7 volt drop through the diode shortening the usage of 4 AA batteries. So I put a switch in instead of a diode. You guessed it, Murphy's lay struck. I accidentally had the battery switch on and the 300 mA adapter plugged in for about 3 hours. Let's just say I didn't need a heater running that night. The batteries melted the battery holder and scorched the wood board it was mounted on. Luckily I didn't start a bonfire in my living room. So as a warning to others DO NOT directly connect a battery to a adapter input unless you want to break out the hotdogs and sing campfire songs around the bonfire that was your circuit.
I tried testing the board by downloading Prop Dos into the eeprom the next morning. Everything went ok. I then turned it on later in the day and got no response. The Prop Tool identified the propeller ok and I could download to RAM but I got a "EEPROM programming error on COM6" when trying to download to the eeprom. I tried a couple of things but nothing worked because I have seen this error before when adding some headers to the I2C bus and found out I shorted the bus. I finally decided to remove the on board eeprom since I assumed it was bad and replaced it with a dip eeprom. I did tie A1 through a 10k resistor to ground so I could add a card edge connector in the future for Hydra cards. I still get the error and I triple checked my wiring.
As luck would have it I have a second unused protoboard, every electronic hobbyist should have backup electronics. My question to the forum is what to do next. Try to see what still is wrong or mark the board as a toasted pop tart and use the second board. Thanks in advance for your advice.
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What electronics need - MORE POWER!!!!!!!
Post Edited (blittled) : 10/25/2008 3:29:23 PM GMT
Comments
If You still caN LOAD ram it is hopefully not Cooked.
Try to ad 2 LEDs on I2C eeprom bus to see if you have activity on it.
If so it is posible other things that you have problems with
Ps. I have problems with XP that caused eeprom load problems
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Nothing is impossible, there are only different degrees of difficulty.
For every stupid question there is at least one intelligent answer.
Don't guess - ask instead.
If you don't ask you won't know.
If your gonna construct something, make it·as simple as·possible yet as versatile as posible.
Sapieha
Hope you get it working again soon, cos I'm looking forward to playing mazogs [noparse];)[/noparse] lol
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
For larger projects I usually build a base of chipboard and use screwed PCB stand-offs which keeps everything in place. Cut the arrow head off one side of the stand-offs to make PCB removal easier.
There's nothing worse than that spark or 'crack' sound caused by a stray off-cut of wire under a board and I also learned the hard way.
All may not be lost. As said earlier, if you can get the RAM to load something is might be alive at least a little. Have you tried to cycle the power on the PC, hub if you have one and Prop board before trying again? I have found that sometimes a power glitch will cause the XP - USB/Com port management to start acting like it's been kicked in the head real hard.
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Signature space for rent, only $1.
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I am running Vista and have noticed the comm port freezes up sometimes initiating a download and I have to reboot to free up the comm port.
Baggers - Mazogs is just slightly delayed. I have the intro screen, menus, and character animation working and my next step is generating the maze. I hope to get it done around Christmas. Right now my life has been pretty busy and I don't have much time for my hobbies.
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What electronics need - MORE POWER!!!!!!!
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
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