21-09-2016, 10:00 PM
Hi Jeffrey
I peered inside my Aurora to see what chip it was using as I remembered reading somewhere (probably in one of your posts) that it used a programmable modulator. It was when I went googling for information on the MC44BS373 that I found David's thread on the UKVRR and discovered that he had already all the hard work done.
While I was trying to get everything to work together I did build it dead bug style on three bits of stripboard and the surrounding area. It was a real pain trying to solder strands of wire onto the SM chips legs, much easier to plop them onto a PCB and and run the iron along each leg. I use DesignSpark which can produce a PCB quite quickly
That article is one I wrote. The PIC I used had the largest memory (96k) that I could find, there was lager 3 Volt ones but I wanted to stick to 5 volts.
A SD card would probably be an easier/better option but I am afraid SD cards, CPU's and CPLD's are way over my head.
Hi Trevor
That's an impressive arsenal of 405 signals.
The firmware on your PIC may need updating as it is an older version that has an error in it.
Each field on both test cards has an extra line, giving 407 lines in total. This didn't show up in my first builds as the resonators I was using were sufficiently out in frequency (high) to keep the field rate close to 50 Hz. However If the resonator is at the correct 6 MHz or lower a Hum bar will be displayed on the Test cards. If needed the corrected Firmware can be downloaded from here.
Frank
I peered inside my Aurora to see what chip it was using as I remembered reading somewhere (probably in one of your posts) that it used a programmable modulator. It was when I went googling for information on the MC44BS373 that I found David's thread on the UKVRR and discovered that he had already all the hard work done.
While I was trying to get everything to work together I did build it dead bug style on three bits of stripboard and the surrounding area. It was a real pain trying to solder strands of wire onto the SM chips legs, much easier to plop them onto a PCB and and run the iron along each leg. I use DesignSpark which can produce a PCB quite quickly
That article is one I wrote. The PIC I used had the largest memory (96k) that I could find, there was lager 3 Volt ones but I wanted to stick to 5 volts.
A SD card would probably be an easier/better option but I am afraid SD cards, CPU's and CPLD's are way over my head.
Hi Trevor
That's an impressive arsenal of 405 signals.
The firmware on your PIC may need updating as it is an older version that has an error in it.
Each field on both test cards has an extra line, giving 407 lines in total. This didn't show up in my first builds as the resonators I was using were sufficiently out in frequency (high) to keep the field rate close to 50 Hz. However If the resonator is at the correct 6 MHz or lower a Hum bar will be displayed on the Test cards. If needed the corrected Firmware can be downloaded from here.
Frank
