My Gigatron Build
Posted: 21 Jun 2020, 20:36
Apologies in advance for a rambling post / thread. This is as much for my own records as for anything else, but hopefully my experience of building the Gigatron is of at least passing interest to someone...
I remember seeing the Gigatron when the EEV Blog video came out, and thinking that looked really cool. Inexplicably I didn't go ahead and buy one straight away; likely as it was ROM v1 at the time being reviewed, and I hadn't grokked the cool learning experience involved.
Anyway, last week I became a really lucky, and extremely happy owner of a new kit. Also pleasantly surprised that it's now on version 4!
So, I'm thinking I'll update my progress here in this thread.
I'm going to go through the steps slowly, and by the book. Hopefully everything will go (fairly) smoothly.
So far steps 1 and 2 are complete. Step 1, capacitors soldered, and no shorts... good start. Step 2, everything looks correct and soldered, and diodes and capacitor are correctly aligned... I thought. Plug in the USB cable and the LED did not light. Slightly anxious at this stage, and rechecked everything - solder joints look good, and the Schottky diode and the capacitor are definitely correct. Tried a different plug, but still didn't work.
I also checked ground against all of the capacitors, and all of them (apart from 1 I think, which didn't have continuity) showed continuity to ground on one side only).
Checked Google how to check the LED, and after putting my meter on diode mode, saw that the LED was very faintly lit, and it was showing around 2.6v wihch I think is correct...
Then I re-read the section and originally thought that it was only the two big pins on the USB connector that I soldered which were required (stupid, I know - but that's part of the learning experience). Soldered the last two tiny pins, and bingo!
Next step will be later this week...
First unboxing of the Gigatron - unfortunately there was a slight chip in the lid of the case, but it's not the end of the world. Step 2 complete - LED is functional!
I remember seeing the Gigatron when the EEV Blog video came out, and thinking that looked really cool. Inexplicably I didn't go ahead and buy one straight away; likely as it was ROM v1 at the time being reviewed, and I hadn't grokked the cool learning experience involved.
Anyway, last week I became a really lucky, and extremely happy owner of a new kit. Also pleasantly surprised that it's now on version 4!
So, I'm thinking I'll update my progress here in this thread.
I'm going to go through the steps slowly, and by the book. Hopefully everything will go (fairly) smoothly.
So far steps 1 and 2 are complete. Step 1, capacitors soldered, and no shorts... good start. Step 2, everything looks correct and soldered, and diodes and capacitor are correctly aligned... I thought. Plug in the USB cable and the LED did not light. Slightly anxious at this stage, and rechecked everything - solder joints look good, and the Schottky diode and the capacitor are definitely correct. Tried a different plug, but still didn't work.
I also checked ground against all of the capacitors, and all of them (apart from 1 I think, which didn't have continuity) showed continuity to ground on one side only).
Checked Google how to check the LED, and after putting my meter on diode mode, saw that the LED was very faintly lit, and it was showing around 2.6v wihch I think is correct...
Then I re-read the section and originally thought that it was only the two big pins on the USB connector that I soldered which were required (stupid, I know - but that's part of the learning experience). Soldered the last two tiny pins, and bingo!
Next step will be later this week...
First unboxing of the Gigatron - unfortunately there was a slight chip in the lid of the case, but it's not the end of the world. Step 2 complete - LED is functional!