Hemi345
Senior Member
I need to vent since I just destroyed a 20M2 this morning for no good reason.
I designed some RGBW controllers for my daughters loft beds lighting project. During the initial programming, I was able to program one of them once and then not again. I thought maybe I had a bad solder joint on either the 10K or 22K resistors (surface mount) so I touched them up with the iron and then it programmed fine. Fast forward a couple weeks to this morning. I was updating the program on both of them. Hooked the cable up to the first one and it programmed without issue. Moved over to the second one and I could see the project running in the terminal but couldn't program it. No hardware found. If I did a hard reset on it, it would say something like "Error: invalid PICAXE chip detected 28X v7.3" or something like that. Same issue I had on the other one initially. Thinking that maybe this one might also have a dodgy solder joint, I took it to my bench and touched up the 10K and 22K resistors. Checking with DMM, I read 22K between SI leg on PICAXE and SI programming header and 10K reading between SI programming header and ground leg on PICAXE. Looks good. Try programming again and same thing. Reboot my laptop, same thing. This was with the AXE027 cable. Try my Trendnet and Vantec programming cables, still the same thing even after rebooting the laptop again and again. At that point, I should have tried another one of my other projects or run the cable test but since I could see this one running in the terminal and this is happening with three different serial cables I'm thinking it's gotta be the chip.... Of course, on this one, I soldered the PICAXE directly to the board because I ran out of 20pin sockets (used the last on my other daughter's board).
Thinking that maybe I messed up the PIC when I soldered it or maybe ESD'd the programming side of things, I tried desoldering the PIC. After an hour of wick and solder sucker I basically destroyed the chip trying removing it from the board. I have one more 20M2 on hand that I can replace it with and this time I use a 14pin and 6pin DIP socket to pop the 20M2 in. I do that and guess what... still the same issue, can't program but I can see it saying "This is your PICAXE 20M2" over and over in the terminal. So I grab a couple other projects and I can't program them either. I run the serial cable test and get a message saying the port is in use by something else. I get no such message when trying to program the chip, just message that it can't detect a PICAXE connected or, on PICAXE hard reset, that the chip type is a 28X. I can see stuff in the terminal but the serial cable test finally tells me that the port is in use!?!? $@#$!@#!! I try the same thing test with my other serial cables and see the same behavior. After closing PE and then starting it back up without the cable connected, then connect the cable I get success during the cable test and I can finally program the chip.
It would be super helpful if PE would run the download cable test before it attempts to program the chip... if that adds a few seconds to the programming procedure, then so be it. Or maybe if the download fails, instead of just an OK button to acknowledge the error, an option to run the programming cable test? Don't get me wrong, I love PE6 and PICAXE in general, but this morning just frustrated the hell out of me.
BTW, I'm running Windows 10 Pro and using PE v6.0.8.11.
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I designed some RGBW controllers for my daughters loft beds lighting project. During the initial programming, I was able to program one of them once and then not again. I thought maybe I had a bad solder joint on either the 10K or 22K resistors (surface mount) so I touched them up with the iron and then it programmed fine. Fast forward a couple weeks to this morning. I was updating the program on both of them. Hooked the cable up to the first one and it programmed without issue. Moved over to the second one and I could see the project running in the terminal but couldn't program it. No hardware found. If I did a hard reset on it, it would say something like "Error: invalid PICAXE chip detected 28X v7.3" or something like that. Same issue I had on the other one initially. Thinking that maybe this one might also have a dodgy solder joint, I took it to my bench and touched up the 10K and 22K resistors. Checking with DMM, I read 22K between SI leg on PICAXE and SI programming header and 10K reading between SI programming header and ground leg on PICAXE. Looks good. Try programming again and same thing. Reboot my laptop, same thing. This was with the AXE027 cable. Try my Trendnet and Vantec programming cables, still the same thing even after rebooting the laptop again and again. At that point, I should have tried another one of my other projects or run the cable test but since I could see this one running in the terminal and this is happening with three different serial cables I'm thinking it's gotta be the chip.... Of course, on this one, I soldered the PICAXE directly to the board because I ran out of 20pin sockets (used the last on my other daughter's board).
Thinking that maybe I messed up the PIC when I soldered it or maybe ESD'd the programming side of things, I tried desoldering the PIC. After an hour of wick and solder sucker I basically destroyed the chip trying removing it from the board. I have one more 20M2 on hand that I can replace it with and this time I use a 14pin and 6pin DIP socket to pop the 20M2 in. I do that and guess what... still the same issue, can't program but I can see it saying "This is your PICAXE 20M2" over and over in the terminal. So I grab a couple other projects and I can't program them either. I run the serial cable test and get a message saying the port is in use by something else. I get no such message when trying to program the chip, just message that it can't detect a PICAXE connected or, on PICAXE hard reset, that the chip type is a 28X. I can see stuff in the terminal but the serial cable test finally tells me that the port is in use!?!? $@#$!@#!! I try the same thing test with my other serial cables and see the same behavior. After closing PE and then starting it back up without the cable connected, then connect the cable I get success during the cable test and I can finally program the chip.
It would be super helpful if PE would run the download cable test before it attempts to program the chip... if that adds a few seconds to the programming procedure, then so be it. Or maybe if the download fails, instead of just an OK button to acknowledge the error, an option to run the programming cable test? Don't get me wrong, I love PE6 and PICAXE in general, but this morning just frustrated the hell out of me.
BTW, I'm running Windows 10 Pro and using PE v6.0.8.11.
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