100 word minimum

It couldn't be that simple

I have learned to be amazed that when we buy electronics, we can take them home, plug them in, and they actually work. Reliably, even. I'm also amazed that computers work, but that's another entry.

We have a couple of the next generation Hamster boards in the lab. Today seems like a good day to power them up and see how they do with the latest version of the software (which, oddly enough, seems to be working most of the time). I plug in all the cables, program the Hamsters, and look! The LEDs light up all pretty like they're supposed to. Everything's great so far, but you know that's too good to last. Indeed, when they connect to the PC and their sampled data scrolls across the display, I can see that the gain settings on the new boards are off. The switches are set to the same value as the other boards, but the output doesn't match. In fact, no matter how I set the switches, the output doesn't match, and the gain only flips between two different values instead of the eight we should be getting. Does this mean the switch is wired wrong?

Oh, goody! Another setback. Well, we were due for a big one.

I tell Dr. Smith, who is as taken aback by this as I am, as he is one of the people who reviewed layouts and schematics—in a quest for precisely such errors—to the point of gibbering insanity last summer. But Dr. Smith has to run off and profess just then. I try to print out the PCB layout so I can see. The printer in the lab is out of paper and, it being after 3:00 pm, there is a dearth of other professors or persons of authority I can ask about getting more from the dean's suite, where the paper is kept under lock and key.

I try a simple test and do some thinking. It may be that the problem is the wiring to the programmable gain amplifier and not the switch after all, but without checking a copy of the layout (reading it on screen is too awful to contemplate), I can't say. Assuming, of course, that the layout matches the printed circuit boards. Which it does. We all messed up when we reviewed the schematics before the new boards were made up.

So I clear out. There's no point in hanging around school and fighting with the layout software. I'm drinking chamomile tea, writing this, and watching Nintama Rantaro. (In searching for a link to the show, I am amazed to find Nintama fanfiction in Spanish. In Spanish, Hemu-hemu the dog says "mehe-mehe" instead of "hemu-hemu".)

451 words | October 28, 2004 07:28 PM | Ivory tower