PIC18F4550 Dev Boards Arrived
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They just arrived, now if I could just get this grin off my face I could assemble one of them.
Smaller than a credit card. PCBCart in China did a fantastic job on the boards. I submitted the artwork on the 9th of this month using their standard 12 day service, and got the boards on the 17th via FedEx Standard! Now that's service! Much better than my experience with PCB-Pool.
The schematic is here.
17SEPT11 Update:I have one of the boards assembled and working. After a lot of trouble figuring out why it wouldn't talk to the PICKit3, its now running fine. Seems I over engineered the /MCLR line with too large of a filter capacitor and in doing so screwed up the timing on the Vpp programing voltage coming from the PICKit3. This explains why I see a lot of empty component locations on motherboards and the like ;)
18SEPT11 Update:Well, I am already learning the shortcomings of my new board and have started work on version 1.1. The RS232 adapter board I use to transition the TTL level to RS232 level started acting flaky. I need to work on a new one or incorporate it into the next design. I also think the board should have an LCD port, not as important, but useful. Last, the spec sheets say I can use the I/O lines for the ICSP, which I did, but they are limiting the usability of some of the lines. It also breaks up a port that could be byte wide usable. The F4550 has dedicated lines for a dedicated ICSP connector, better implement that too.
More pix to follow.
