So in November I ordered a Board with the programmed Atmega 2560 already soldered on with a bunch of adapters from Stephan Slabihoud at https://8bit-museum.de. I the proceed to the wait while DHL stuck on what must have been the slowest boat crossing the Atlantic. It finally arrived on February 6th. DHL and USPS did there best to destroy it but thank to it being double boxed by Stephan it arrived unscathed.
So the pictures don’t do it full justice the cardboard of the outer box is completely limp. There is no rigidity left.
So now I’m ready to start. I have a big bag of parts from Digikey and It’s time to start soldering.
This is my first nights work, It took a while to get that big bag of parts in order.
So Evening two went much faster now that my parts were mostly in order. The 1n5817 diodes fit really tightly into the holes in the board. I had to be really careful and methodically to pull them into place. The resistors and other diodes were tight, but those were especially tight. I suspect one more evening will finish up the main board. Then It will be on to the DC-DC module. The adapters will wait until I get the appropriate sockets. But I can’t imagine it will take that long. To Be Continued.