Does the Propeller Chip work on the Professional Dev Board?

dmyers

Does the Propeller Chip work in the 40pin Professional Developer Board Parallax currently Sells?

Ken Gracey

No, but. . . there's nothing preventing you from putting a P8X32A-D40 in the breadboard and wiring up the programming interface.

Because the Propeller is such a different device than the BASIC Stamps and SX chips, we felt it needed a new Propeller Professional Development Board. Honestly, we would have preferred to not to design another board (and ask you to buy another one), but it would have been a disservice to the Propeller's capabilities not to have video, keyboard, mice connections, not to mention the 3.3 V design. Such a board is under design right now.

This will get several of us a bit excited about lead times, but let me use the prior Professional Development Board to illustrate a timeline. From conception to inventory, the first Professional Development Board took a year. It won't take that long this time, but I doubt we'll see any before September/October. Between a new design, these RoHS rules, 3.3V and collecting input from our staff and customers, this one will take a while.

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Sterling

So we get delays on new products partly because of RoHS. Yet another indirect result to the consumer.

LoopyByteloose

Hi, I personally think that you can easily adapt the DB9 of the PropSTICK to work. If you don't want to or cannot completely breadboard the Propeller, this seems a good fit.

All you need to do is have a 5 pin 90-degree set of pins soldered th the FemalesDB-9 [noparse][[/noparse]so that the pins face outward] and then solder to the surfaces of mating pads on the PropSTICK. Solder each pin one at a time so that things don't become undone.

Be sure not to get pins 1-5 reversed during this assembly process.

In this fashion, the PropStick's serial port would be pointing toward the ceiling.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

I'd be concerned about any modification to the PropSTICK that puts tensile stress on the DB9 pads. Better, if it's going to be used this way, is to solder wires to the pads, insert the other ends into the breadboard, then do the same with the DB9 connector. That way any stress from a mating connector and cable would simply pull the DB9 out of the breadboard and not tear off any pads.

With the DB9 soldered onto the PropSTICK the way it was designed to be (i.e. sandwich-style), the only forces acting on the pads are shear forces, and these won't lead to delamination. If a connector is soldered to one side only, tensile forces come into play, and these could cause the pads to delaminate.

-Phil

LoopyByteloose

I understand. You want the device to last as long as possible -- a quality design.
I worry that flexible wires will eventually find a way to break and require repair.

There really isn't anything as strong as what you provided. But as you know, people have commented in a few different threads that they really want to use the PropSTICK and the PDB together.

Another alternative is to solder a 4 pin 0.1 plug to the pads and then use epoxy to mechanically secure it.
Then you could use either flexible wires pig-tailed to a DB9 or my elbow configurations.

As I have said before, I really cannot improve the PropSTICK, it is an excellent design in a very compact package.
But, I am pretty sure it is adaptable to the PDB in several different ways. You just have to use one of them to make the DB-9 not interfer with the 40 pins that need to plug into the breadboard.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan