Need a Preassembled board

[bachan]

I have bad luck and have had a bad day. Bad week, actually, but here is my story-

I buy the board, I buy the processor, then I go to digikey for all remaining components. Find/buy everything I need (paying shipping 3 times >.<) only to have one of the pieces from digikey go missing. No worries, I figure. Go to radioshack, they don't sell it. They also can't get one in stock for me. So I am back to digikey for a 25 cent purchase with 5 dollars of shipping.

So I spend about 75 dollars total getting all the parts for this machine. No worries. It costs roughly 80 to get the kit from thinkgeek (after shipping), and to be honest something this cool is probably worth 100.

So the night that the last part arrives, I set to work. Of course, I am a freshman in college with no scholarships, living in an apartment on my own, and paying for all my own meals and the like. All with a job as a cashier at Kroger. What this means is I lack the money for any luxuries like, say, a good soldering iron or a vice to hold the board on while I solder. No- I used the cheapest iron I could find and did all my soldering atop a cardboard box.

After 3 hours (finishing at about 2am) I had gotten every piece soldered into place. I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked. No solder was running over from one place to another and everything was connected. I pop the IC chips into the sockets and plug it up, expecting all to work well... I get a blank screen.

I borrow a multimeter from a friend. It is getting power. Exactly 3.29V. I can even tap a piece of metal to the LED or buzzer to set them off while it is plugged in. So why the blank screen?

Frustrated and wanting to solve this, I spend my little money reserves on a desoldering iron (again- the cheapest available) and an IC remover. I then find that somehow the propeller chip has wedged itself into the socket so firmly that the pins all rip off before the chip comes out.

Furthermore- I burned myself on the desoldering iron... Twice.

I began this project 2 weeks ago. I spent last week trying to fix it. Yesterday technically (it's 1am here now) was my anniversary with my girlfriend. I wanted to make this for her as an anniversary present. It is already late and has already caused me enough pain, anger, and frustration. I just want a working ybox2 that I can give to her so that she can have fun programming it.

I am willing to pay $100 US

[darco]

How did you get the bootloader onto the EEPROM if you didn't buy a kit? Did you get a prop-plug (or equivalent) as well?

This isn't exactly a good project for beginners, due to the number of parts -- especially if you aren't using a kit.

Sounds like your prop is pretty ripped up. Are you sure the rest of it can't be salvaged? (Perhaps uploading a picture of the board you have would be helpful)

[bachan]

Well thanks to the magic of solder and the fact that only a few pins were ripped, I think the prop can be salvaged in a ghetto fashion.

I was to assume that a bootloader was built into the processor, not the memory chip. Since the parts list included a link to digikey and referenced a type of chip (rather than sell their own version) it seemed logical that any ROM chip would work and I wouldn't need the specific one from their kit.

Perhaps you could explain to me the process of putting a boot loader on the chip? I have done plenty of electronics work before, but I have never really worked with microprocessors other than programming an already-assembled machine. Maybe if I put a bootloader on the chip then it will turn out the whole thing actually works.

[adafruit]

i think the parts list is pretty clear:
http://www.ladyada.net/make/ybox2/parts.html
"64KB i2c EEPROM, preprogrammed with bootloader when purchased in a kit "

you need a propeller programming cable, i have a little writeup here with two DIY types
http://www.ladyada.net/make/ybox2/progcable.html
and upload the bootloader yourself

[bachan]

^^;; Unfortunately I just made note of every part number, not the side notes. I figured that since a part number (and link to digikey) was supplied, that meant you only needed that specific part. I did not suspect I would require the specific chip supplied.

So it is very possible that my board works perfectly. Could someone explain how to put a bootloader on once I get the hacked cable made? I will find and purchase one of these cables at first convenience and get to modding it.

[darco]

It's quite easy once you get the cable rigged up, assuming you have a windows machine available.

You'll need to download the Propeller Tool, from parallax: http://www.parallax.com/tabid/442/Default.aspx

It is the integrated development environment and programming software for the propeller chip. You can use it to write the bootloader to the EEPROM. I've attached a copy of the bootloader binary here for your convenience.

[mccurry]

Well if you are still looking for the board, I am selling the entire kit assembled and working. Tested it and have pics.


Let me know if you are interested.

Thanks
Matt

Matt [at] mattcurry [dot] com