create's blog

Lot s of progress on this one. At first we got held up trying to create a single sided board with a reasonable number of jumpers from the pin assignments we had originally conceived for the AID 8 Bit Bus. Eventually we realised we would have to bend our human logic to a logic which is better suited to the electrical requirements. Stefan and Mike finally took the leap and redesigned the 8 Bit Bus for the easiest routing and the results were so sublime that we decided to post the redesign for comments. Everbody agreed it was the best way to go even though it rendered our existing main boards and peripherals plus all documentation for the point-to-point design of the main board unusable. To remedy the compatability problem we came up with a conversion mapping and Erin built a converter that adapts the old 8 Bit Bus header to the new one.

Today I did a thorough testing of the DLP USB Module on Mac OS 9 but could not get it to work on my Apple PowerBook G3 Pismo running Mac OS 9.2.2

I tried various control panel combinations and cross tested them with the Keyspan adapter and it's drivers. Keyspan works DLP does not. Will try on other hardware but not hopeful.

The DLP works great on Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows.

Today I fixed the wiring list, parts list inconsistencies that were noted by Erin in her blog.

Mike

I went out and bought the missing parts and the PCB Mainboard is populated but it doesn't communicate over the serial port. No Hello. Power section is functioning correctly.

It needs to be debugged. Can anyone have a go at it before Sunday?

Mike

Having problems mapping the parts list, to the schematic, to the PCB layout. All three are in conflict.

The power block on Rev4 schematic does not correlate with the PCB.

The parts list indicates there is a 4.7 nanofarad capacitor but it isn't on the Rev4 schematic. It is present on the point to point version of the mainboard as built. I decided it must go where the oval shape is on the PCB Layout diagram.

We don't have a value for the diode that is not the LED in the power block. Rob could you give us a spec?

Somehow we are back down to 4 capacitors in the RS232 block on the PCB where as we have 5 in the Rev4 schematic.

I just lost all the menus and got them back. Here is what happens. I wanted to get the old task list out of the "Project Development " section and move it to the task list area in the Forums.

First I made a note of the node page and then created a Forum topic into which I entered an href tag to link to the existing page.

Then I wanted to remove the reference to that page in the "Project Development " menu so I went to the Administer> Menus section and deleted the AID Task List menu item. After a refresh all of the menus had disappeared. Yikes!

Luckily I had recovered the disappeared menus previously when they mysteriously disappeared. I used the same technique and was able to recover all the menus and the one I was intending to delete did not return. This is crazy but it works.

Well it took 10 hours but I have figured out how to convert Autocad .dwg
files on a Mac, get them to be .gif files and post them on both the old and
new site. They are actually sourced from the same files on both sites but
the htlm linking to them had to be added to both sites. It took a while to
get the right settings in Illustrator and PhotoShop so I will document the
process on the AID site. The conversion does a pretty good job but some of
the text boxes close up so that the text in them can't be seen. If you have
an idea where some text should be you can click to reveal handles which can

A first blog entry to the AID site. I am thinking it might be good to have each AID developer set up a blog to record what they have been working on in the AID meetings and inbetween. It would give a more detailed and personal perspective on what we are each getting on with. The minutes would still serve as the collective reflection of what was accomplished and where we are going next.

So here is my personal report:

We had a good turn out today! It seems the increased communication and creation of a task list is drawing support. We are hoping to have a Launch for the AID project in one months time so we could really use some help to tie up the loose ends. It was great to see John S. back to help out after a long period away. Welome back John!