Problem-B-Gone!
15pF caps cobbled into Ben’s TV-B-Gone(Click for more photos…)
So, that TV-B-Gone problem from last night is sorted. Just after coming in from shoveling snow† I remembered that I had an 8MHz crystal hanging out on the EasyPIC 4 I acquired about a year ago (photo gallery retired). I just dropped the crystal on the board, squeezed in some 15pF caps on the back of the board (not sure if these are the right value, but they should be close enough), and tested it. As expected, it was now working. Also, because we used no-clean flux there wasn’t anything more to clean off. That was quite nice.
To make it a little more pocket-friendly I put some 1″ Harbor Freight Special heatshrink tubing around the main part of the body. This makes it nice and smooth, and parts are less likely to be accidently torn off. (Danielle accidently knocked one of the transistors off… Oops… This will get replaced next time I order something from Mouser or Digi-Key.)
Anyway, it’s working good now. Now it just has to get back to Lapeer and in
† This is normally handled by the condo association, but because of the heavy snowfall I decided to do my porch and in front of my garage myself, instead of waiting for the snow clearing company to get to it.