Dave, VK3DSB now has his STAR on air !
LAST UPDATED ON August 19, 2008
Some pictures of his progress here.
Hi Glenn,
Just scared myself. I put together the DSP PCB and DSP motherboard. All ready for a first power on test. NO Flashing LED!!! The LED just came on and that was it. Could see no bus activity with the scope, so I thought "I've buggered the DSP chip". Then I pulled the EPROM and got bus activity:o I checked the EPROM (an Intel D27C512) on the programmer and it verified OK. Programmed another, same type and no go. Found an AMD 27C512 and programmed that. Everything is fine now!! Got the famous or infamous flashing LED and current draw is exactly as you specified on the schematics. Don't know what the go is with the Intel EPROM's. They check out OK on my programmer, but refuse to work on the DSP Board. All the EPROM's are 150nS types regardless of brand. Might be something for people to watch out for, or it could be just the ones I have got here.
Cheers Dave
3rd Nov. Pictures sent by VK3FUEL of
his Picnmix mounted on temporary chassis. Note the brass opto wheel. See
pictures below also.
26th Nov David has been working hard.........
UPDATE March 2008, David has moved even further along: Can't be far off being on-air soon. Some wiring etc to do yet.
August 12th, 2008, Dave is now on air with his star ! What a fantastic job.
Hi Glenn,
Finally took some pics of my star so far for your builders page. Had a fantastic weekend with the RD contest. I made 50 RD contacts with the star, and 5 Lighthouses on 80m, 40m and 20m bands.
Got good reports from all states and a couple from New Zealand!! It is a joy to use, and considering I'm only getting ~12Watts out into a dipole 6m off the ground, the results are very impressive.
There were only a couple of times I had to call a station more than once to make contact. The LPF I built is what's responsible for the low power output. I'm going to remove it tonight after the 80m net and do some testing with it at work tomorrow. Once I get that sorted out and the BPF properly tuned, I'll go through the full set up and calibration again.
I may end up replacing some of the coilcraft coils in the BPF with toroids, but it doesn't seem too bad so far.
First time "On Air" was last Tuesday (12-8-08) night with Paul VK3DPW in Langwarren on 80M. All in all a fantastic feeling, with many thanks to you and Chris for all your hard work. Hope we can hear each other tonight if your going to be on.
Dave VK3DSB
