Hi Thorsten I feel I should mention that I am very new to electronics, I have only been doing this for 3 weeks, before that I knew not very much. I apologise that I got pin 13 & 11 mixed up. Yes there is a voltage at pin 13. I am also worried that the SN74HC14N's are damaged as I connected an incorrect voltage battery at first and blew the capacitor at vdd pin 32 which I have since replaced (I have tested every component as directed by online tutorials with the multimeter and that was the only component that showed an open-line reading.) Should the in/out pins of the SN74HC14N's as described at http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1882348.pdf show some resistance when disconnected from the pcb and connected to multimeter leads as when testing a wire or fuse? at the moment I am getting open circuit between vcc and gnd and also between pin 13 and 12 on the SN74HC14N with the multimeter. Also some of my 1st time soldering was nervous and I didn't do a good job of the ground pins on the parallel cable and one of the ceramic capacitors on the vdd pin on ic3, I think I should re-solder them, could this be affecting anything?Many thanks.