Micromachines
Half the USBKEY is now soldered up with the adapter boards, which are already proving useful. Having easy access to the serial USART is fantastic, as it allows for a much higher-level debugging than the JTAG MKII allows. Both systems combined make for very easy debugging – from a technical standpoint, that is.
The other half of the boards will have to wait. I underestimated just how darn difficult – even with a fine-point iron – it is to solder the absolutely minute pads on the USBKEY. If there’s ever a petition to up the size to normal 1mm pads, I’ll be the first to sign.
Time for me at the moment is very short and very precious – plenty of homework to keep me busy until the mid-semester break in another two weeks or so. Then I’ll have a nice long week of rest before being pushed right back into the thick of things for the last term of my first year.
In other news, Atmel have just released a very interesting AVR video blog post about the history of AVRs which I highly recommend that everyone so-inclined should watch. Lots of interesting behind-the-scenes footage of the Atmel fabs and design house, which is what I’ve been craving to see ever since the AVRTV website started up a few months ago.
Last week, my latest USB memory stick died, making it the third or fourth I’ve gone through. I seem to have a bad juju about me about USB memory sticks (and packages, which is another story) with fake sticks, bad flash chips and dead controllers being the norm. My next stick will hopefully last a little longer. After the first one died, I was taught a painful lesson about keeping backups on the hard drive after loosing two weeks worth of code. This time I faired better, with only inconsequential files being lost (as I was using it as a transport between computers).
