The DSP Card!

Wasn't too bad.  There was more parts on the board than I thought so it actually takes a little while to build.  Probably three and a half hours total taking out bathroom breaks, meals, etc.

It doesn't take an hour to mount the DSPic either.  It took me about 8 minutes and that was with videoing and doing extra rework because of the videoing.  But I already wore that topic out in the last post.

I also like to have clean boards so I was constantly cleaning this board.  The way the parts are laid out may it necessary to clean often.  I was probably OCD on this and took 30 minutes extra just on that alone!

I'm still looking for IC3.. and I mounted R47 first instead of last!  (There is no IC3 but there is instructions to mount it in the build instructions and R47 is a Do Not Populate).

Above is pictures of when both SMT Chip "cards" are populated on to the board-- but before the electrolytic capacitors and IC's are populated.   I put the LED's on early so I could get the first card out of the way.  Otherwise I followed the build instructions to this point verbatim.

During the PIC and IC mount I followed the instructions verbatim as well.  I only strayed by mounting the 2N7000's last (since I thought they might interfere with the mounting of the electrolytic capacitors that I find to be a little "fiddly" to mount.... probably they would NOT have interfered...)

And again... I won't be able to mount the right angle connector until I get a replacement.  So I unfortunately cannot fire up my board set yet.  :O(

Here is a picture set of my finished (except for the right angle header) board:

Yes, the ICD header is correctly mounted and I didn't snip off the pins.  The angle of the shot looks like that but it's kosher.

Overall the board build went well and I am confident it will give me much joy...