On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:46:18 -0700, ChairmanOfTheBored
wrote:

On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:36:12 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
wrote:

"John Larkin" wrote in
message news
This its the first article of a new waveform generator. It took me a
while, an hour or two, to find a stuck bit on the uP data bus; turned
out it was a bad solder joint on one of those tiny quad resistor
packages. Something about their geometry makes them hard to solder and
hard to inspect.

Seems as though the most reliable thing we solder is BGAs. Who woulda
thunk it?

That may be the first DIP socket I've seen on one of your boards.


Keeps firmware "quick and dirty". No frills required.

Well, I'd have preferred "quick and clean." We did one box that was
flash based, field upgradable, and it added a lot of hassle, both in
the design and in walking customers through upgrades.

The last two pieces of test geat I bought (Keithley 2100 DVM, Aeroflex
spectrum analyzer) both were shipped with pretty serious bugs,
probably on the theory that, hell, it's flash, let's ship now and we
can always upgrade them later. I've convinced both vendors that they
actually have bugs, and am waiting for fixes. If I ever get them, I'll
have to reflash the instruments somehow, and hope it works.

The Aeroflex is designed and made in Korea, and Keithley refuses to
answer my question about whether they designed the DVM; they certainly
didn't manufacture it.

John