Picaxe chips supplied in there original pic form and without picaxe program

tecnition_ted

New Member
Hi All wonder if any of you have had a simlar experience with Revolution education as I have got nowhere with with Revolution education in solving my previous problem.
About a year ago we received properly identified picaxe 14-m2 chips we had 10 in stock During a training session we hold for hobbyists none of the 14m2 would program after going through stock and having built a chip tester we found none of the chips worked (all 10 of them) they also acted differently by pinging the serial bus very rapidly. after getting nowhere with Clive at revolution education who insisted there was no way the chips could have got through the quality checks we threw them in the bin and took the loss. Everything was ok again until this last order we ordered amongst other picaxe chips some 08m2 chip's. they came in with the native chip engraving on them 12F508, I tested them all and some did have the picaxe program in them but not all of them did so this is another 7 chips that seem to have the original pic 12F508 Faulty pic ic.jpgfirmware.

Is anyone else having this problem?
 

roho

Member
No, this is a problem that I've not seen, although I haven't ordered any PICAXEs since 2018. Over the years I've bought some 240 PICAXEs of various types, including about 100 08M2s, and as far as I can recall, never had any problem with any device.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Everything was ok again until this last order we ordered amongst other picaxe chips some 08m2 chip's. they came in with the native chip engraving on them 12F508, I tested them all and some did have the picaxe program in them but not all of them did so this is another 7 chips that seem to have the original pic 12F508
I am not aware we have ever stocked or sold 12F508 devices. With the current issues with supply chains we have shipped some PICAXE devices which are engraved with Microchip labelling rather than the usual PICAXE labelling, but for the 08M2 that would have been 12F1840.

The 12F508 only contains 512 words of internal Flash while the 12F1840 has 4096. It is also lacking on-chip hardware which the PICAXE firmware uses. It is impossible to see how the PICAXE firmware would fit a 12F508 or how you have any which are programmed as PICAXE chips.

Where did you purchase these chips from, from our own PICAXE Store or elsewhere ?
 

nick12ab

Senior Member
The 12F508 could be the NKM2401 manchester transceiver which is sold in the PICAXE Store, so it should produce serial data but it shouldn't be a PICAXE.

As for the 14M2s, did Clive check your circuit? There's all sorts of seemingly "minor" things that could cause your symptoms, such as no pull-down on the Serial In pin, no decoupling capacitors, and a bad power supply.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
The 12F508 could be the NKM2401 manchester transceiver which is sold in the PICAXE Store,
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that.

If it has been a picking or packing mistake then please accept our apologies. Contacting the sales team or emailing the usual orders@ address should get things sorted for you.
 

Goeytex

Senior Member
My question is where did these 12F508 chips come from?. Were they ordered directly from Rev-Ed or from elsewhere?

If ordered directly from Rev-Ed and the invoice shows (7) 08M2 chips on the invoice, and NO NKM2401 chips, then Rev-Ed should replace them. It could be 'possible' that NKM2401(12F508) devices were mistakenly substituted for 08M2 devices.

If ordered from a supplier other than Rev-Ed then that supplier should replace the chips with the correct ones.
 

tecnition_ted

New Member
I am not aware we have ever stocked or sold 12F508 devices. With the current issues with supply chains we have shipped some PICAXE devices which are engraved with Microchip labelling rather than the usual PICAXE labelling, but for the 08M2 that would have been 12F1840.

The 12F508 only contains 512 words of internal Flash while the 12F1840 has 4096. It is also lacking on-chip hardware which the PICAXE firmware uses. It is impossible to see how the PICAXE firmware would fit a 12F508 or how you have any which are programmed as PICAXE chips.

Where did you purchase these chips from, from our own PICAXE Store or elsewhere ?
Hi Hippy sorry for late reply, all of our Picaxe chips are purchased through Revolution education. we do not buy from any resellers
 

tecnition_ted

New Member
The 12F508 could be the NKM2401 manchester transceiver which is sold in the PICAXE Store, so it should produce serial data but it shouldn't be a PICAXE.

As for the 14M2s, did Clive check your circuit? There's all sorts of seemingly "minor" things that could cause your symptoms, such as no pull-down on the Serial In pin, no decoupling capacitors, and a bad power supply.
hi Nick12AB, sorry for the late reply the chips were tested in a known good test board and behaved weariedly strobing the serial out pin not like picaxe.
 

tecnition_ted

New Member
My question is where did these 12F508 chips come from?. Were they ordered directly from Rev-Ed or from elsewhere?

If ordered directly from Rev-Ed and the invoice shows (7) 08M2 chips on the invoice, and NO NKM2401 chips, then Rev-Ed should replace them. It could be 'possible' that NKM2401(12F508) devices were mistakenly substituted for 08M2 devices.

If ordered from a supplier other than Rev-Ed then that supplier should replace the chips with the correct ones.
hi Goeytex the chips were purchased direct a chap called Colin at revolution education refused that the picaxe 14m2 chips could be faulty so we gave up trying to return them and switched to just using 20M2 and 08M2 chips. we didn't have any issues until now so I thought I would ask the Forum in case their is a few getting out. I cant believe we are the only ones to have this issue twice.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
hi Goeytex the chips were purchased direct a chap called Colin at revolution education refused that the picaxe 14m2 chips could be faulty so we gave up trying to return them and switched to just using 20M2 and 08M2 chips.
I can't comment on what happened back then as I wasn't a party to those things.

If you still have the 14M2's to hand and wish to investigate further that may be worthwhile. I suspect the issue is the 14M2's being programmed with the "I'm alive" message, causing the output pin to continuously strobe, while, for some reason, programming or Hard Reset was not having the desired effect.

we didn't have any issues until now so I thought I would ask the Forum in case their is a few getting out. I cant believe we are the only ones to have this issue twice.
It does on the face of it seems 12F508's may have been mistakenly supplied when 08M2's should have been. If they were all in the same tube and only those were 12F508 that would seem to support the supposition. It could have been a case of a misplaced tube, having fallen into the wrong product bin, or good old fashioned human error.

If you contact our sales team I am sure they will be able to resolve the issue.

As for it happening twice; I suspect this is a different case to the first. I can only say it is extremely rare for any mistakes to happen but, like everyone else, we are only human. I can only apologise that you have experienced two sets of problems, only assure you that most people don't have any.
 

tecnition_ted

New Member
Hi Hippy,
we understand that this could be human error our concern was mainly that we seemed to be getting native chips rather than picaxe engraved ones. I have worked with Microchip on many occasions and on many occasions they have got things very wrong LORA WAN development Mot's for example were a disaster when they first came out and it took them a long time to admit they had things wrong, so they lost trust with my company.

I will ask purchasing to see what we have but I think because this is used for training they are thrown out and parts reordered.

I will let you know if we have any more, hopefully not. I am amazes though that only ourselves seem to have had this problem as I'm sure there must be people out there that have projects that don't work and they don't understand why. We were lucky to have 20 picaxe 08m2's in stock so could try a different batch or we would have been fault finding for a long time. We have also had at the same time Strip board from CPC that has not been etched properly so it has minute bridges between tracks. Our first thoughts were this was a cause so we made a tester and found the issue with the chips.



Thank you for your reply and all your help with our projects it is much appreciated
James
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
I am amazes though that only ourselves seem to have had this problem
I think that's mostly a reflection that we do get things right far more often than not, that such problems are indeed extremely rare.

One of the reasons for engraving the chips with the "PICAXE" ident was so users could tell at a glance they had got pre-programmed PICAXE and not native PICmicro. Unfortunately global supply channel issues have meant taking chips with standard PICmicro ident so there is a potential for confusion but we can categorically say 12F508 have never been used as PICAXE chips.
 
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