Dead Pin?

Psilent Knight

I'm experiencing what appears to be a dead I/O pin. I cannot seem to do anything with that pin. Even with a simple LED circuit if I use pin 14 it doesn't work. All of the other pins seem to work fine. I've visibly inspected the BS2 and the socket on the board of education and all appear in good order. Is it possible that I've just done something bad and killed that pin? I'm considering just ordering a new BS2 but that won't do me any good if it is the board of education that's the problem. Can anyone here offer any advice, or is this just going to be trial and error at the cost of $$?

Thank you,

-- Matthew

Peter KG6LSE

"Ohm-out" the pin to its Headder to its socket .


EDIT: I read .18Ω on my BOE..
Peter KG6LSE

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"Carpe Ducktum" "seize the tape!!"
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LOL

Psilent Knight

I'm novice enough here that I'm not sure what you mean. I do have a multi-meter, could you explain the test?

Psilent Knight

Nevermind, I had someone local explain it to me. It seems fine between all points. My friend said that means the BS2 might be bad. Fortunately he's got one too so we're going to swap 'em tomorrow to find out. Thanks for your help though, it was mighty quick!

-- Matthew

LoopyByteloose

You can certainly test the i/o several different ways. Having output cycle high and low in one second intervals for all pins is the quickest way to identify something wrong. Input damage might be a bit more tedious to do as you would probably have to connect your BS to your computer and read the inputs in Debug while you apply +5 to each individual pin.

I hope that helps you.

It certainly is possible to burn out one I/O pin. I have one and only one Basic Stamp around here that is that way and I use it for more funky projects as very often I don't need anywhere near 16 i/o pins.

I have also broken off pins and soldered on my own (taken from an old IC or a piece of #20 wire) repairs rather than send them back to Parallax (a long, long way from tropical Kaohsiung).

These things are just facts of life - wear and tear occurs as you jump into your Basic Stamp adventure. I kind of admire the more beat up Basic Stamps because amongst my collect all are still in use and so far I've only killed the one i/o pin.

And I greatly admire that for all the screw ups, I haven't yet destroyed one BS completely. (Suggestion - when you first power up a new circuit, keep one finger on the BS and if you finger gets burned; kill the power.) The SXes are very rugged processors, so is the Propeller.

The funny thing is that ALL my damage has occurred to pins at the four corners of the package. They certainly seem to be the easiest to damage.

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Ain't gadetry a wonderful thing?

aka G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan

Psilent Knight

Thanks so much for the thorough reply! I swapped mine out with a replacement from a friend and sure enough, everything worked fine. So it does look like pin 14 is toast. I am going to go ahead and get a new one but I'll definitely keep the old one around. As you said, it's only one pin and the rest seem to work just fine! Love it!

Thanks again,

-- Matthew

erco

Sometimes you can fry a pin's output capability but you can still use that pin as an input just peachy. So by juggling pins, you can retain full 16-pin functionality.

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·"If you build it, they will come."