wavecircle

I think the pads are intact, it's very hard to do the continuity because the board has tracks on both sides and it is fully populated. I would need a schematic to see what should be going where. I took the Sammich down to my EE friend and he said the soldering isnt up to scratch as I was using too thick and the wrong kind of solder, hopefully he can fix it.

Right, I've figured out what I think is wrong with my technique. It's basically the solder I am using. It is 99.3% tin and 0.7% copper and at 1mm thickness. In order to melt this quickly I have found that I need my iron to be around 300C. What I think is happening is that the pads are getting overheated/damaged and I am therefore not getting a good connection with the solder. Would this sound reasonable? I believe that 60% tin and 40% lead melts at a much lower temperature, reducing the risk of pad and track damage? I will probably have to buy another sammichFM :(

The sound doesnt output properly either. There must be something fundamentally wrong with the way I am making this thing to have so many problems. Any one wanna buy it off me?

My multimeter doesnt have a continuity beep, I have tried the diode mode which is the closest thing ive got. It's really hard to follow the tracks with the board fully populated. I'm going to throw this thing in the river.

Where would I do these tests? Do I need to power the device up?

My multimeter doesnt have continuity testing I dont think. I've never done it before, how is it done?

Notches in the IC are aligned with the notch marking on the PCB. Very frustrating.

Hmm, I just resoldered all the relevant points using flux, still doesn't work. It's ironic really because the soldering on the bottom buttons is worse than the buttons on the top but the bottom buttons work fine. I swapped the 165 ICs round and that didnt change anything so I know the ICs work. Is it possible that I have burned out the transistors? Would that effect the encoder and top buttons?

Hahaha, this didn't take long. The bottom buttons work fine, I can navigate the pages no problem and the esc and arrow buttons work fine too. The encoder and the top buttons do not work. I am guessing that the two 165 chips route to the 595. My presumption is that the top 165 is missing a connection or isnt working. Would that be right? I don't think I need to troubleshoot the bottom set of buttons because they seem to work fine. Again, should I just resolder all the joints relating to the top 165 chip?

I fixed it. Just some slightly loose joints. I resoldered and it loaded up fine. My interface probably doesnt work now.

My backlight is very dim too. I adjust with the trim pots and it just gets fainter until it disappears.

I have just tried with my MOTU 828mk3 interface and that doesnt work either. I am thinking that the MIDI in isnt working on the sammich.0 I get a long chain of f0 00 00 7e 40 00 0e 0c 00 f7 on my midi in window in MIOs studio.

I have also tried taking the PIC out and doing the RX/TX feedback loop. I get nothing on either of the Mios screens

Ok, I have tried this on my PC running Vista still using the 2x2 midisport. When I boot up the Sammich I get the f0 00 00 7e 40 00 01 f7 message once. When I query the device I get: f0 00 00 7e 40 00 0e 0c 01 f7 five times. IS this still a frame error or is something wrong with the sammich?

I could kiss you. Yes, midisport 2x2 on mac 10.6. I cant find anything wrong with my build so this is a big relief. How do i fix it?

Hello, I just finished soldering, voltage checking and installing ICs, all seem to be fine. When I boot up the sammichFM when connected to MIOS studio I get 3 messages on the MIDI In box: f0 00 00 7e 40 00 01 f7 f0 00 00 7e 40 00 0e 0c 01 f7 f0 00 00 7e 40 00 01 f7 The sammichFM LCD doesn't display anything other than dark rectangles. AFAIK I am only supposed to get one message (the first one) when booting up. Also when I query the device from MIOS it doesnt pick up anything. I have checked the relevant connections that the build guide suggests but there is nothing obvious wrong. I can't see any shorts, all the voltage checks are fine, the shunts are in the right place. I fear this might be an IC fault, if so this is going to be tricky to figure out.