Comment by pkiller
8 years ago
I totally agree. The reason I stuck to DIP ICs was because I could fit them into breadboards and I thought that was easier than any alternative. I was incredibly lucky on how all the breadboards were functional. And there were a few times where I would accidentally disconnect a wire and spend the next 2 hours trying to figure out what was wrong. All this without having a logic analyser and not even an oscilloscope until much later in the build (they are not that cheap). And yes the project sure is complex, too complex, but I guess I was lucky, and I'm glad it's working :).
I had a few interesting experiences breadboarding for a project of my own, for a 6502-based project. Most notable were:
- Being able to detect noise from the system clock crystal oscillator all cross the breadboard (using my oscilloscope)
- Seeing certain I/O pins float to a bit too high of a voltage, when they were supposed to be "low", probably due to breadboard capacitance
- Accidentally making an AM radio when I forgot to connect a wire on an LM386 I was testing as an audio amplifier
Things got a lot cleaner when I went to a PCB, but I did make it all work on breadboards first.
FYI: saelae makes an affordable logic probe. chinese clones are available for ~$10 and usually work with saelae's official software or with sigrok. a logic analyzer is really a game-changing tool.
More power to you for being patient enough to fight through! I’m nowhere near that good.
I'm really not that special, don't sell yourself short.
And thanks :)