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Micro Center Customer Service: Win!

Published March 10, 2009

A bottle of Bawls for a coworker and a clearance USB SATA disk enclosure for Danielle. The disk enclosure turned out to be missing screws.

Today at lunch I headed over to Micro Center to return some parts† and purchase a 2.5″ SATA to USB 2.0 disk enclosure for Danielle’s old hard drive and a bottle of Bawls which I cowrker asked me to pick up for him. I was fortunate (or so I thought) to find the disk enclosure I wanted for $11.96, on clearance because it’d been returned. It was listed as complete and a quick peek inside the package showed that all parts seemed to be there, so I purchased it.

Once I got out to the car (where I snapped that photo) I opened up the box again, but found the enclosure to be missing the screws used for holding the chassis together. Making the enclosure essentially unusable I went back inside, to the same Customer Service person who had returned my previous items, and explained to her that despite saying complete it was actually missing parts. She ended up just doing a like-for-like swap, resulting in my acquiring a brand new enclosure for the clearance price. The difference is only a few dollars, but it was still nice.

This, combined with my original return and previous customer service experiences at Micro Center lead me to believe that, contrary to their terribly inaccurate, misinformed, and misleading commissioned sales people, the customer service folks seem to be pretty okay to deal with.

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HW-group’s Hercules

Published March 10, 2009

Since Dominic / is doing some serial port troubleshooting today, I dug up a link to one of my favorite serial port troubleshooting tools: HW-group’s Hercules. This is made available ostensibly for use with their RS232 / network / remote serial port devices, but it works great for all manner of serial port work.

I’ve used this utility quite often in the past when testing out serial ports, USB to serial adapters, and various serial devices that I’ve made. I like it because it shows the status of things in virual LEDs and allows you to send arbitrary data, manually toggle DTS/RTS on and off, and just generally generate and receive serial data at will. It also has some nice built-in network features that allow one to virtually use a serial port across a network, and other features which are generally useful for those doing serial network stuff.

Here’s a quote from HW-group’s Hercules page which lists its basic features:

· All basic TCP and UDP utilities in one file, no installation required (just one .EXE file)
· Implemented Serial Port Terminal is working with the Virtual Serial Ports (COM12 for example). You can check and control all serial port lines (CTS, RTS, DTR, DSR, RI, CD)
· Simple TCP client (like the Hyperterminal) with the TEA support, view format, file transfers, macros..
· Easy to use TCP Server with the TEA support, view format, file transfers, macros..
· Hercules contains simple UDP/IP “Terminal” with view formats, echo, file transfers, macros..
· Support the NVT (Network Virtual Terminal) in the Test mode tab, as like as NVT debuging features..
· Using Telnet extended with NVT allows serial port configuration (RFC2217), device identification, confirmation of data sequence, etc.
· It’s FREEWARE you can use and share this software free – check the licence!

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SDrive NUXX End Panel v1.0

Published March 8, 2009

SDrive NUXX Front and Rear Panels v1.0

After a very busy weekend working on polishing the SDrive NUXX documentation, PCB layout, end panel artwork, and programming nuances (in between fun times for dinner with friends, parents visiting for dinner, etc) I’ve come to what I hope are the final versions. That up there is v1.0 of the end panels, which I hope capture a nice 80s feel with the Atari-esque font for the name and the round-end single-pass-with-a-cutter-in-a-mill line font for the labels.

This artwork is also (hopefully) much better than the last stuff I posted, a bit over a month ago, which was rather limited, particularly due to the limited features of Front Panel Designer. This new artwork was done in Illustrator, providing far, far more flexibility. Hopefully the end panels will come out nicely.

I’ve also finished off v1.1 of the PCBs, moving the tactile switches slightly outwards, adding two missing traces, fixing a footprint, and adding test pads to make voltage testing after assembly easier. This, combined with the finished artwork, and the (forthcoming) results of ‘s testing will hopefully allow me to open up ordering by Wednesday. Yay! Now it’s time to rest for a day or three.

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First Longish Ride Of The Year

Published March 6, 2009

Standing in the basement, very sweaty, wearing an MMBA jersey after my first longish bike ride of the year (36 miles).

Here, have a dorktastic, slightly out of focus photo of a very sweaty me, complete with an indentation from the Coolmax Shorty that I wear to keep sweat from running down my face.

Tonight after work I went on my first long-ish bike ride of the year, totaling just over 36 miles. I left my house just before 6pm with the intention of riding to Metro Beach, but turned around about two miles from the park (at Crocker and Metro Parkway) because it was starting to get cold.

In the low laying / windless areas the temperature was much closer to freezing, so heading back home through parks and over the low-laying streams was a bit bitter at times. Thankfully once I got closer to roads again things warmed up to today’s nicely comfortable weather.

During this I was only insulted by random strangers a handful of times; typical for riding in this area. Three people honked at me, but the passenger in one of the vehicles strangely apologized. Two people shouted things, including a very loud and almost horse sounding “fucking freak!”, and one person came within 6′ of hitting me as I crossed an intersection and they made a 35MPH right hand turn. (I’m certain this person saw me, as my bike was fully lit up, there are bright street lights there, and I made eye contact with both the driver and the female passenger as they began their turn.)

This was also the first time I was able to try wearing a cycling jersey while riding, and I must say that I found it quite a bit more comfortable than the $9 workout t-shirts from Target that I’d worn last year. This may prove to be a problem, because these jerseys aren’t cheap. Maybe I can find a way to get a bunch at a discount or free… Hmm… I do think I’ll probably be buying this Dogfish Head jersey as soon as they sort out their pricing error. (It currently says $50 discount, but has the original price as $49 and the discounted price as $99.

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Random Bike Things

Published March 6, 2009

Here’s some random bike things which you may or may not care about…

· After a bunch of shifting problems while riding during the really warm day a few weeks ago I determined that my shifting cables and houses needed to be replaced. Tonight I replaced them, finding the cables intact but the ends of the housings rusty and the innards dirty. I’d had the parts since before I went on vacation, but finally got around to it today.

Cutting the cable was very easy with Dremel cut-off discs and a razor blade and awl for cleanup. I then dripped some Triflow in each end of the cable, fitted the end caps, then assembled everything Shifting is now as smooth as it was when my bike was new a year ago. I’m sure there’s a bit of fine tuning I’ll have to do as the cables stretch, but things seem nice so far.

· I washed my Specialzed bike tonight so that I could replace the shift cable, and at the same time also washed the Bianchi Single Speed. It didn’t really need it, but most bike washing time is spent setting up the hose. So, why not?

· The forecast tomorrow is for highs near 60°F, so I’m hoping to get out for a ride tomorrow after work. I’ll start towards Metro Beach with the intention of riding there and back, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the full 46 miles. We’ll see. This will be my first longer distance ride since last fall.

· I’m not so sure about the On-One Mary Bar that I’ve been borrowing. The Bianchi handles very nicely with it on the bike, having a nice twitchy feel that I can’t wait to try on single track, but on longer rides (as Bob and I did last night up through River Bends and back) the slightly odd positioning makes my wrists hurt. Maybe some Ergon grips would help. I do like these, and would probably want them on the riser bar the bike came with, so a purchase wouldn’t be lost money.

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End Panel Mockups

Published March 5, 2009

Cardboard mocked up front panel with the v1.0 / Prototype PCB in the enclosure. Production panel will be 1.5mm thicker.

Tonight after a profanely busy day at work I did cardboard mockups of my current SDrive NUXX front and rear panel artwork. I’m mostly happy with it, but as my printer seems to stretch things out slightly on the page I have to double-check a few things (toggle switch hole and DIP switch markings, in particular), but I think that what I have is close to the final artwork design.

Here is an image showing the rear panel with SIO connector, reset button, etc. Note that the ugly blue switch caps were used because I don’t like them, so I was willing to throw them away on a prototype. The other switch caps may be seen here. I think I’ll be putting black on the front panel and red on the reset button on the rear. It’d be nice if a dark gray cap was available, but Digi-Key nor Mouser seem to list one.

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SDrive NUXX Is Working!

Published March 3, 2009

The SDrive NUXX up and running, with the SDrive by C.P.U. software running on the television behind via my Atari 800XL.

Today I learned a little lesson about programming AVRs†. After sorting that out I was able to properly use the SDrive NUXX‘s onboard programmer with no problem. After that I thought it should have been working, but the device wouldn’t work. Poking around I found the AVR running, but then found that the SD card slot was only getting about 1V, which is far below the 3.3V it requires.

This problem turned out to be caused by the LE33CZ 3.3V LDOs that I’d ordered from Digi-Key. As can be seen here, when fed 5V the LDOs were putting out just over 1V whose datasheets I had read wrong. I stupidly missed the “from bottom” note on the pinout section and been both fitting and testing the part backwards. (This is another thing to fix in the v1.1 / production run.)

For testing last night I worked around this by feeding the SD card 3.3V from a benchtop supply, everything worked great. The following morning I understood my mistake and fitted the parts properly, and now the benchtop supply is no longer needed. The 2GB SD card I’d picked up for cheap at Micro Center worked great, and I had no problems loading most of the .ATR images which I’d tried.

There’s still a couple problems with the PCB, but I’ll sort those out before the production order. Most notably there is the missing traces in the programmer, then I also screwed up the switch marking silkscreen for the front panel. Whoops!

At least it’s working. Yay!

Continue readingSDrive NUXX Is Working!
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Electronics Woes

Published March 2, 2009

Completed board, connected via a M-M DB25 cable to a PC, for programming.

After returning home from a really great vacation Sunday morning (more on that later) and sleeping, I got to work on the SDrive NUXX PCBs which had arrived last week. While the boards themselves look good and went together well, I’ve yet to get things working right. I first had some problems getting the chip programmed, but patching two missing traces (my fault) and powering the target device sorted that out.

Tonight I found that as soon as I set the fuses on the AVR, even after a successful program, the chip can no longer be accessed by the programmer. I believe this is because the programmer is then trying to talk to the chip at too high of a rate, but I’m not completely sure. Also, the option for setting the programmer to the slower mode (using PonyProg2000) is seeming to not work, so I’m not completely sure what’s happening.

Now it’s time to just relax and get ready for tomorrow. That’s another day of work, then maybe some bike riding. After that I can get back to working on this, and hopefully figure it out.

More photos are available on pages 2 and 3 of the SDrive NUXX album.

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