hardware not found!

Gramps

Senior Member
Our 40X2 chip cannot find hardware.
Following tests have been made:
The download cable loads fine to the 28 pin project board.
The 40X2 is wired as drawn in the diagram that was sent with the chip.
Power (4.96 volts) is at pins 11 and 32 (positive) and at pins 12 and 31 (negative.)
TX is to pin 6 and RX is to pin 7
Adapter ground is grounded
10 k resister is on pin 1 and +5
reset switch is on ground and pin 1.
Gramps
 

inglewoodpete

Senior Member
Hi Gramps, your wiring sounds correct.

Forgive the cut-and-paste but I have only just posted the following on another thread:
If your PICAXE is new and has never been programmed by you before, it should constantly output a message (like) "I am you PICAXE 40X2" on the SerOut pin, when the chip is powered up. You can check this by connecting an LED with ~330ohm resistor between the PIN and 0v. The LED should flicker every one or two seconds as the message is transmitted.

In my experience, PICAXE chips are pretty tough little beasts and can survive a lot of mistreatment. However, they do not survive being connected to voltages much over 6v on any pin (I'm not suggesting that this has happened in your case).


Another easy test you can do is to disconnect the power from your board, remove the PICAXE chip and perform the loopback check on the board with the programming cable connected to it. Poke a short piece of wire (Eg offcut from a component) into the PICAXE's socket holes 6 and 7 and try typing into the PE terminal.
 

The bear

Senior Member
PE terminal?
Top left, click Picaxe (Next to Simulate) you will see the Terminal, or press 'F8' on your keyboard.
bear..
 

Gramps

Senior Member
We recently acquired a serial OLED module. Perhaps we can read that welcome message on the 40 pin chip😁

Edit: when we jump directly to the breadboard adapter, the terminal program works but apparently this OLD OLD Parallax Pro. Development board has died. The contacts must be rusty as they do not conduct!
 
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Gramps

Senior Member
Does anybody have a good source in the USA where we can purchase various parts and accessories for microcontrollers?
Would especially like to find a 40 pin PCB already etched with some lines coming out to the edge.
 

premelec

Senior Member
You might check the URLs listed by RevEd that stock PICAXE parts... also change the socket in the board that has failed and/or re-solder the failed board. There are surplus dealers like Electronic Goldmine, BG Microelectronics, MFJ Associates and so many others. Full full catalog and new prices DigiKkey. Usually something like strip board is ok for one off projects... Do you know how to solder and have suitable equipment and materials?
 

inglewoodpete

Senior Member
Once I take a working model off the breadboard, I usually build the prototype (or final) design on stripboard or Veroboard. The -Digikey (Vector) versions can be seen here- but they seem to be very expensive compared to my usual (local Australian) suppliers.

Stripboard has strips of copper foil the full width or length of the board, with perforations on a 0.1" grid, making it suitable for most through-hole components. The strips are easily cut to isolate segments by using a twist drill on the copper side of a perforation.
HC-12BaseStation.jpg
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Stripboard or veroboard would be my suggestion for building breakout boards for PICAXE chips.

It is possible to buy stripboards which have the tracks cut rather than continuous which are fine for 0.3" narrow DIP chips but they are often not that suitable for 40-pin 0.6" chips as they usually have three holes per section.

Various suppliers may also produce their own beakout boards for various size chips.
 

lbenson

Senior Member
... Would especially like to find a 40 pin PCB already etched with some lines coming out to the edge.
If you're talking about 40 pins for a 40X2, you (and anyone else) can use my EagleCad design from 4 years ago.
40htmlserver.jpg
4 years ago it cost me $22.40 for three boards. All you need to do is submit the attached 40htmlserver.brd file to oshpark.com.

I've also attached the 40htmlserver.sch schematic file in case you want to make changes. As I recall, all pins of portB and portD are brought out to the edge, and 6 portA pins. Various portC pins have special uses.

You can't attach files with extensions of .brd or .sch so I've appended ".txt" to the file names. Remove that to get the proper file names. If you don't want to make changes, all you need to do is go to oshpark.com and upload the .brd file. To make changes you need to download EagleCad and learn it (there's a pretty steep learning curve--I'm barely competent).

Turnaround with Oshpark is about 2 weeks.
 

Attachments

Gramps

Senior Member
LBenson, Thanks for the file. It will be useful down the road.
inglewoodpete, that's also a useful resource, thanks!
Gramps
 

Gramps

Senior Member
New discovery!
Could not get the LED to blink with the new chip as Inglewoodpete discribed, but the terminal program "sees" the Hello World intro as a long string of ASCII charactors!
 
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