Really enjoyed the time lapse, it's crazy how much content you have to strip to make it digestible, it's super appreciated though, I'm thrilled you have some awesome fans.
I love your videos. I won't pretend to understand everything going on and no doubt will never have the depth of knowledge you do. However you present these in a way I always learn something and fill in gaps of my knowledge. Your videos have a calming effect and I'm always glued to what your presenting. You don't show off, just show what's happening. Looking forward to your next video. You must inspire lots of people to start new projects or pick up where they left off with an old one. I dont watch TV anymore, but if it had content like this I would be square eyed. Thsnkyou for making these videos with the passion you do.
I built this device recently and Stephan was amazingly helpful when I had some trouble getting it working. Once it was working it has solved mysterious problems for two of my C64's already! Thank you again Stephan!
That's really a fantastic device. It has a spot permanently on my workbench as well and I find myself often reaching for it. Glad you liked it! Great video too. I never saw the C64 cartridge dumping before, so that was neat 👍
Yeah I watched your video on this thing and was pretty envious of how cool it is! I really recommend building up the #4 DC-DC and then powering it with a USB power bank. Then you can carry it around the house to do testing while watching TV!
@Mr Guru likely, but it would have still been interesting (to me and apparently a few other people) to actually see it detect a fault in one of the known broken chips. I know nothing about actual hardware. In a game where you build CPUs from NAND gates I've designed plenty of components that passed all the tests and still contained bugs :-)
the video thumbnail perfectly represents my reaction when I realized he hasn't given up on the Model II yet - great work, Mr. Black! I hope you'll get it up and running again
That was a good point on benefiting from a serial interface. Most "real" test equipment supports control and automation though a standard inteface but I haven't seen that kind of feature in "homebrew" stuff.
You almost sounded like a kid in a candy store! It's a really good feeling when you can confirm all the parts you've been storing for years, are either good or bad, and reorganize your inventory accordingly! Nice job...
The chip/testing, analysis, programming, etc was interesting but WAY above my current needs. However the tricks and tips on assembly . . that I can use immediately. A very informative video. Also I am convinced you have never thrown away an IC in your life :)
I saw you using it in one of your other videos, I was so excited that I looked for it, and ended up buying the PCBs. The developer is really a nice guy and responded very quickly. I'm looking forward to put it together, probably as a Christmas holiday activity.
I first saw these featured on Noel's Retro Lab. I think it's an amazing concept. I was legit surprised that I hadn't seen them here first, given the number of ICs you work with in your videos. That said, I have a feeling you're going to get quite a bit of use out of this device.
Hi Adrian, I have been using this tester for about half a year now, and all I can say it's awesome. Use it a lot with arcade pcb repair and have only found 1 sram ic that wasn't supported. After mailing Stephan, I immediately got a reply and the same day I could test this ic, how is that for support! Can highly recommend this to everyone and I did not even come close to the $200 when building it, maybe slightly over $100. Regarding the C64 cartridge read, I saw you had both low and high jumpered, this should be EITHER low or high, not both this is why you were getting the different checksums all the time.
@@retro_online6927 It's a kit, you can buy the pcb with arduino chip soldered on from the maker, and then you have to order the parts and build it yourself.
@@patzik1910 I already send email to stephan and replyed to me Very cheap maybe in total cost for all parts and adaptors with shipping like 150£ but unfortunately the customs in Egypt very high that maybe come to with 400$ fees
Although I've seen you use this before, I'm just now watching this video. The fact that this is a privately run project by a hobbyist is amazing. That's an invaluable took and you'd never find anything like it in the manistream.
this thing was a pleasure to build, as I had most of the parts in my various bins, and it works really well. the designer does very frequent updates to the software, adding support to more and more parts. it found that a bunch of my suspect DRAM parts were toast.
Your and Noel's video about the RCT convinced me to build it, too. Now I was able to test some RAM chips, just to find out, I've bought some defective ones... :/ ... But the build was a pleasure and great fun. Thanks for giving some insights about the EPROMs, too...
Not sure where to post this so I'm doing it here, but your videos have reactivated my inner retro geek. Have been so far just playing with old OS's from my past career in VM. Hoping to start collecting older components and systems so I can play with the real thing.
Adrian!! As soon as I saw this video, I ordered all the parts and the board. Yesterday, Dec 29th, I finished putting mine together and tested it. Boom! I tested 25 8Kx8 SRAMs and they all worked. I got board 1.2k with the 5 switches. Also I read programming the Atmel controller. You had mentioned that it seemed slow, but mine is rocket ship fast. I wonder if you might need to check the fuse programming. There’s info in the documentation that mentions that the controller might run at 1 MHz instead of 16 MHz if the fuses are wrong. And I like firmware version 20 very much. Just do a check of the fuse programming and make sure it’s right. Thanks for a great video and now I’ve got a fantastic tester. Thanks!!
Your opening is too good. It's like a tasty Halt + Catch Fire episode is about to launch, but on the budget of an 80's highschool AV club. I'm in it now.
OK this is awesome and your video really took me over the edge to pull the trigger on this. Been looking at this for a while now and know it is a mature project. Just put in my order for boards and parts. !! Thanks for your excellent presentation.
I don't see the speed as a real issue actually, maybe when you constantly have to use it, which seems unlikely. The support it has is simply amazing. The serial interface would definitely be great to have.
To properly test RAM takes a lot of time no matter what, shortening the test would just cause false positives and leave you with an unstable system when you put it to use in a computer. I wish he'd tested with a few known bad chips too...
My fav tech channel strikes again. I really love your videos, even me will never use these PCs and gadgets I like to watch to learn aomething more about it.
Tauntek makes an excellent tester for logic ICs which will catch problems most others won't. It also has a very nice user interface which is accessed via a serial console.
Something I found with the magnet trays; put it into a sandwich bag. The magnet will be strong enough to hold it through the plastic, but when you're done, flip the bag around and you can remove all the tiny parts in 1 go
Bravo! I don't know where to start. I love this project and what it can do. I loved watching the build part of the video. It can serve as inspiration for project folks to commit to a build like this (knowing it can be done with careful planning).
I was hoping you'd take a RAM chip from the dead parts bin to scare us, like you test it, it fails and only after that you'd admit you actually deliberately tried a known bad RAM chip :) At the part where you dumped the 1540 chip I was 100% sold on this. Such a cood device!
There are two sided pc board holders that has a foam lined lid you can clamp over the board then flip the holder upside down while the parts are being soldered.
What a brilliant tester. I was hoping you were going to check one or two chips that were bad just to confirm what you already knew. The serial interface would definitely be great
Rich... That's the 7473. I repair B&k tube rejuvenators and they run a 7400 and 7473. The 7473 is positive triggered where as the 74LS73 is a negative trigger.
This tester seems to be evolving quite nicely. I still think the user interface would have been much nicer if they’d based it on a rotary encoder instead. I also think it’s a pity they didn’t push it out to a full 40pin ZIF interface. Just in terms of future possibility of testing PIA / CIA etc, and also support for bigger Retro EPROM’s (eg. Amiga ROM / 27C400 etc.). Perhaps there was a limitation on I/O pins on their chosen MCU? Finally, it would be good to see a smaller SMD based PCB design, eventually. But, certainly an outstanding effort creating this awesome retro tester so far! Keen to see how it evolves further.
@@johndododoe1411 40pin ZIF would cover the vast majority of retro chips. The only 64 pin DIP devices that immediately come to my mind are the TMS9900, as you mentioned, and the Motorola MC68000. Both being CPU’s, which you also wouldn’t typically be trying to test on a device like this.
Just had a 25 year flashback while looking at the soldering of this PCB. I am tempted to give you some heat for your order of assembly and handling of some components, but who cares as long as it works in the end.
9:15 I have often seen this behaviour with switching regulators; for whatever reason they fail to bootstrap their startup without a much larger than expected current available in the first few micro/milliseconds (and get stuck drawing a lot of current), but once the converter is running they drop down to the expected load. It does make it a bit difficult to test newly built designs like this because you end up needing to provide a lot more current limit on your lab power supply than you'd like, but once you know the cause it's easy to work around it.
Just a quick note about those little USBasp devices you were trying to use. Many of them are actually cheap Chinese clones of the real USBasp project and run a junk firmware that only works with a sketchy Chinese program called PROGisp. Hardware wise, they are identical and it is possible to reflash their firmware with the proper USBasp one, but it requires an Atmel programmer to do so in the first place. A USBasp is perfectly capable of flashing a mega2560 chip, as far as I am aware, there is no such limitation on any Atmel programmer.
Shame you kept your left hand over the Vcc LED (RED) as when I test an Vintage TTL chip the Vcc light goes out, so I assume it has some current limiting going on, I could see if yours stayed on, but great video, thanks for spending the time to do this.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 depending on the speed of response from the device, maybe it would be viable to make a small module that would take care of the rotary encoder and program it to work dependent on rotation speeds by sending fast series of signals the faster you rotate it, like some oscilloscopes/hardware doo-daas do it. If it's not fast enough with responding, then that falls apart.
@14:45 - Worth noting that there are IBM 30-pin SIMMs (256Kb, 512Kb, and rare 1Mb) that are a slightly different pinout (for incorporating the Presence-Detect - 'PD' - scheme) that would need another SIMM adapter.
The overall design of this device reminds me of this cheap "M-Tester" electronic component tester I have. You can plug just about any basic electronic component in, press one button and it will auto-detect what's plugged in and its value (not accurately). I wonder if a similar auto-detection capability is possible for logic chip families, e.g. instead of selecting 74565 if you could just select 74xx and have it figure out it's a 565. (I doubt this is possible across different families because of the different power connections)
Maybe the usb port can be used for a serial connection. That way this board can be controlled by a pc with a virtual port over usb like with an arduino?
Here’s (really) is a helpful hint: group your ICs by part #, then you can batch test all the parts with that part # without having to go back-and-forth through the RCTP’s menu system! 😍
Super clean work , well done. As I’m new to electronics as a hobby, please forgive me if this is a stupid question… You use a magnetic hardware tray to stage various components prior to installing on PCB. Will it cause any issues if the wire of individual components, i.e. resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc. become magnetized? I’m assuming it’s possible the wire can become magnetized because you also used a mag tray for your off cuts and they appear to be magnetic. Thanks for time and the great video. Entertaining and uber informative. Thanks again- Jason Burchell
An interesting thing about the compatibility search tool included is that you can use it to find compatible parts for chips you don't know about when repairing a machine.
@Mr Guru which is why I said "that you don't know about"; it's a good reference guide for beginners or for people that thread into unknown territory (e.g. a guy who has repaired a lot of C64s doesn't have to know about compatibility of seemingly bespoke parts for a different device).
@Mr Guru I don't know if I'm not explaining myself adequatedly or what. What I mean is that the list allows two kinds of people to know compatibility: 1) total begginers 2) people with experience that start going outside their area of expertise My example with the C64 was meant to be taken as "a person who knows everything to know about the chips found in a certain kind of machine, e.g. a C64, that starts tinkering with machines that have chips other than those, perhaps none in common". Said hypothetical person would be able to find substitutes for any chip they already know, but throw at them something they are seeing for the very first time and they are going to be clueless (until they go dig the info, which this thing helps to make way easier).
@Mr Guru You have to know those files exist and what the RCT is (wikipedia offers no solutions). Not everyone starts from a position of knowledge and not everyone obtains the same learnings from their experience. Things you believe obvious may be new info for someone who's never needed them before, even if they have a lot of experience. Please check the terms "curse of knowledge" and "déformation professionnelle".
Using those tactile switches like that will eventually break them. The plastic white top to the switch with the 4 black dots will eventually snap off. There are other tactile twitches with metal tops that are a bit stronger, but I still don't suggest using the switches that way. I replace dozens of these a week at my job due to people trying to use the switches this way. Also the tall tactile switches snap off easily if they are bumped, I suggest trading the tall ones for all short tactile switches, as it would two bird one stone the issues I've listed. This is not a complaint, I enjoyed the video. I'm now looking at buying one of these testers myself for my job :D As this would be very helpful ! Just wanted to help with issues you may face using those switches from my experience :)
I saw Noels review of this thing too a while back. Looks like around $200 + for everything , not including any adapters, and locating some parts can be a pain. I may wait a bit. Also Adrian, this video alone may cause them to completely sell out of stock of the main board lol. You're going to turn into a Mr. Carlson's lab, where every device you show on video sells out immediately online afterward or the used ebay price goes into orbit... lol
Thanks for this great video. I finally received mine and have it built/firmware uploaded. For some reason the power LED doesn't work so got some investigating to do but I'm really excited to finally have this. I was woundering if you could do a follow-up video on setting up databases on the SD card. Looking forward to getting MAME database setup. I have some arcade PCB's that need fixing.
I'm thinking about buying this and that would be an immediate mod to make. Still, viability depends on the firmware, probably. If I can send really short, fast series of pulses to make a software acceleration depending on the speed the encoder is rotated in, then that's a mod I'm willing to try out. Otherwise, if it comes out slower in practice than zooming through options by holding the switch, then... well.
1702's are used in the front panel of some ALTAIR 8800 and similar computers from that era. Also often used as a state machine so it's entirely possible there is nothing especially sensible in the way of code inside
The $40 option isn't a fully assembled PCB - it's the PCB with the ATmega2560 installed and programmed, along with a micro USB and the fuses set properly. You'll still have to buy all the other components, and install them. If you're going to go the DC/DC route that Adrian uses, you can save some money by not buying the components for all of the various power inputs, as well as omitting the components underneath the DC/DC board.
I think the best version of that device would include a connection for a raspberry pi as a daughter board that could run a web server which would host the big chip database, the documentation, the sd card contents, and a streamlined control page to operate it from.
The "Start of text" checkbox in the searching tool sounds like it's what's requiring you to enter the W before 24257 at 23:00. Try unchecking that and searching again? The list of equivalent part numbers sounds extremely useful; now if only we had that for other types of chips =P
25:20 just stick a flathead screw driver into each side hole and the cover will open and allow you to slide back so you can insert the cart into the tester. It won't damage anything since it's all plastic.
Really enjoyed the time lapse, it's crazy how much content you have to strip to make it digestible, it's super appreciated though, I'm thrilled you have some awesome fans.
I love your videos. I won't pretend to understand everything going on and no doubt will never have the depth of knowledge you do. However you present these in a way I always learn something and fill in gaps of my knowledge. Your videos have a calming effect and I'm always glued to what your presenting. You don't show off, just show what's happening. Looking forward to your next video. You must inspire lots of people to start new projects or pick up where they left off with an old one. I dont watch TV anymore, but if it had content like this I would be square eyed. Thsnkyou for making these videos with the passion you do.
I built this device recently and Stephan was amazingly helpful when I had some trouble getting it working. Once it was working it has solved mysterious problems for two of my C64's already! Thank you again Stephan!
That's really a fantastic device. It has a spot permanently on my workbench as well and I find myself often reaching for it. Glad you liked it! Great video too. I never saw the C64 cartridge dumping before, so that was neat 👍
Yeah I watched your video on this thing and was pretty envious of how cool it is! I really recommend building up the #4 DC-DC and then powering it with a USB power bank. Then you can carry it around the house to do testing while watching TV!
Can it test a DIP28 2 channel floppy drive controller?
It'd be interesting to see how chips fail tests on that tester, as I recall, you do have a fairly hefty bucket of bad chips.
Had the same thought .. especially since I'm seriously considering getting one of these testers.
Yep I was hoping he'd get out the dead parts box and test a few, especially some junk MOS chips :D
Same here. I kept thinking "grab the bad ROM from xxxxx video". Maybe in the next video.
@Mr Guru It would have been interesting just to confirm that it doesn't always report 'ok'.
@Mr Guru likely, but it would have still been interesting (to me and apparently a few other people) to actually see it detect a fault in one of the known broken chips. I know nothing about actual hardware. In a game where you build CPUs from NAND gates I've designed plenty of components that passed all the tests and still contained bugs :-)
the video thumbnail perfectly represents my reaction when I realized he hasn't given up on the Model II yet - great work, Mr. Black! I hope you'll get it up and running again
That was a good point on benefiting from a serial interface. Most "real" test equipment supports control and automation though a standard inteface but I haven't seen that kind of feature in "homebrew" stuff.
You almost sounded like a kid in a candy store! It's a really good feeling when you can confirm all the parts you've been storing for years, are either good or bad, and reorganize your inventory accordingly! Nice job...
The chip/testing, analysis, programming, etc was interesting but WAY above my current needs. However the tricks and tips on assembly . . that I can use immediately. A very informative video. Also I am convinced you have never thrown away an IC in your life :)
I saw you using it in one of your other videos, I was so excited that I looked for it, and ended up buying the PCBs. The developer is really a nice guy and responded very quickly. I'm looking forward to put it together, probably as a Christmas holiday activity.
I just built my own, thanks to you covering the versatility of this little gadget! Quite a useful project!
I first saw these featured on Noel's Retro Lab. I think it's an amazing concept. I was legit surprised that I hadn't seen them here first, given the number of ICs you work with in your videos. That said, I have a feeling you're going to get quite a bit of use out of this device.
Hi Adrian, I have been using this tester for about half a year now, and all I can say it's awesome. Use it a lot with arcade pcb repair and have only found 1 sram ic that wasn't supported. After mailing Stephan, I immediately got a reply and the same day I could test this ic, how is that for support! Can highly recommend this to everyone and I did not even come close to the $200 when building it, maybe slightly over $100.
Regarding the C64 cartridge read, I saw you had both low and high jumpered, this should be EITHER low or high, not both this is why you were getting the different checksums all the time.
Where can I get it ?
@@retro_online6927 It's a kit, you can buy the pcb with arduino chip soldered on from the maker, and then you have to order the parts and build it yourself.
@@patzik1910 I already send email to stephan and replyed to me
Very cheap maybe in total cost for all parts and adaptors with shipping like 150£ but unfortunately the customs in Egypt very high that maybe come to with 400$ fees
Although I've seen you use this before, I'm just now watching this video. The fact that this is a privately run project by a hobbyist is amazing. That's an invaluable took and you'd never find anything like it in the manistream.
Pretty cool device. It would have been nice to see some ICs pulled from dead parts bin to show the results of testing a known bad part.
Thanks Adrian. Reading up on this, it supports a good range of logic chips, I'm going to look into getting one of these.
this thing was a pleasure to build, as I had most of the parts in my various bins, and it works really well. the designer does very frequent updates to the software, adding support to more and more parts. it found that a bunch of my suspect DRAM parts were toast.
You beat me to it Adrian! I have the parts to build one right here!
Your and Noel's video about the RCT convinced me to build it, too. Now I was able to test some RAM chips, just to find out, I've bought some defective ones... :/ ... But the build was a pleasure and great fun. Thanks for giving some insights about the EPROMs, too...
Not sure where to post this so I'm doing it here, but your videos have reactivated my inner retro geek. Have been so far just playing with old OS's from my past career in VM. Hoping to start collecting older components and systems so I can play with the real thing.
Adrian!! As soon as I saw this video, I ordered all the parts and the board. Yesterday, Dec 29th, I finished putting mine together and tested it. Boom! I tested 25 8Kx8 SRAMs and they all worked.
I got board 1.2k with the 5 switches. Also I read programming the Atmel controller. You had mentioned that it seemed slow, but mine is rocket ship fast. I wonder if you might need to check the fuse programming. There’s info in the documentation that mentions that the controller might run at 1 MHz instead of 16 MHz if the fuses are wrong. And I like firmware version 20 very much. Just do a check of the fuse programming and make sure it’s right.
Thanks for a great video and now I’ve got a fantastic tester. Thanks!!
Well done Adrian! Amazing work on this project, and now you have a tool you can both admire your handy work making it and something you can use.
Your opening is too good. It's like a tasty Halt + Catch Fire episode is about to launch, but on the budget of an 80's highschool AV club. I'm in it now.
OK this is awesome and your video really took me over the edge to pull the trigger on this. Been looking at this for a while now and know it is a mature project. Just put in my order for boards and parts. !! Thanks for your excellent presentation.
This is so cool - thanks for reviewing. For reference the UK reseller no longer sells or supports the device.
I have absolutely no need for this whatsoever, yet I really what one. Testament to your video. Really enjoyed this, thanks 👍
Dang, what a fun channel you have! Love longer format videos and very well edited and explained.
I don't see the speed as a real issue actually, maybe when you constantly have to use it, which seems unlikely. The support it has is simply amazing. The serial interface would definitely be great to have.
Yeah not many people have 100s of chips to test, yet alone in a row.
To properly test RAM takes a lot of time no matter what, shortening the test would just cause false positives and leave you with an unstable system when you put it to use in a computer.
I wish he'd tested with a few known bad chips too...
My fav tech channel strikes again. I really love your videos, even me will never use these PCs and gadgets I like to watch to learn aomething more about it.
What a beautiful tool. Like you, I really had no way to test dRAM except for putting them into a functioning device.
Tauntek makes an excellent tester for logic ICs which will catch problems most others won't. It also has a very nice user interface which is accessed via a serial console.
Something I found with the magnet trays; put it into a sandwich bag. The magnet will be strong enough to hold it through the plastic, but when you're done, flip the bag around and you can remove all the tiny parts in 1 go
Such a great tool. Kudos to the designer! What a ton of work.
Love my RCT pro. I haven't even explored all the features yet. I have tested several boxes full of chips for friends.
Seriously useful bit of kit, lot of excellent features for retro computing
I LOVE IT. THE BEGINNING, 8 BIT VIDEO IN 4K. HAHAHAHA. LOVE THE 1980'S. WHAT'S SAD, I STILL MAINTAIN SOME OF THIS STUFF. BUT WELL BUILT STUFF.
Bravo! I don't know where to start. I love this project and what it can do. I loved watching the build part of the video. It can serve as inspiration for project folks to commit to a build like this (knowing it can be done with careful planning).
Yes, the tester is really neat. I built mine a few month ago and was also really impressed how good it is :-)
I was hoping you'd take a RAM chip from the dead parts bin to scare us, like you test it, it fails and only after that you'd admit you actually deliberately tried a known bad RAM chip :)
At the part where you dumped the 1540 chip I was 100% sold on this. Such a cood device!
Watch for an upcoming video of this -- I did end up raiding the dead parts bin.
Top tip for the board handler ... Don't use tape to stop parts dropping out. Use a piece of soft (antistatic?) foam sheet instead. Works WAY BETTER.
There are two sided pc board holders that has a foam lined lid you can clamp over the board then flip the holder upside down while the parts are being soldered.
What a brilliant tester. I was hoping you were going to check one or two chips that were bad just to confirm what you already knew. The serial interface would definitely be great
very great device!! Thanks for reviewing it so intensive. Specially the 1702 part I liked a lot 😉. Cheers, Peter
Thanks for sharing the build, it was very interesting to watch.
i hope that a lot of good things come to the man who did all the effort and ship you this :D
Awesome! Saved to my "Interesting Tech" playlist.
I'm so excited to see this used for the TRS-80!
Great video. Been looking for a new project since I finished building my IMSAI 8080 front panel replica and this sounds right up my street.
What an amazing piece of kit!!!
What a great bit of kit. Got caught out years ago with a 7473 or might of been a 7474 when the LS version had a different function to the basic chip.
Rich... That's the 7473. I repair B&k tube rejuvenators and they run a 7400 and 7473. The 7473 is positive triggered where as the 74LS73 is a negative trigger.
It would be great to have a link to buy in Canada and a digikey BOM cart setup for ease!
This tester seems to be evolving quite nicely. I still think the user interface would have been much nicer if they’d based it on a rotary encoder instead. I also think it’s a pity they didn’t push it out to a full 40pin ZIF interface. Just in terms of future possibility of testing PIA / CIA etc, and also support for bigger Retro EPROM’s (eg. Amiga ROM / 27C400 etc.). Perhaps there was a limitation on I/O pins on their chosen MCU? Finally, it would be good to see a smaller SMD based PCB design, eventually. But, certainly an outstanding effort creating this awesome retro tester so far! Keen to see how it evolves further.
Imagine testing a 64 pin CPU chip, like TMS9900.
@@johndododoe1411 40pin ZIF would cover the vast majority of retro chips. The only 64 pin DIP devices that immediately come to my mind are the TMS9900, as you mentioned, and the Motorola MC68000. Both being CPU’s, which you also wouldn’t typically be trying to test on a device like this.
Just had a 25 year flashback while looking at the soldering of this PCB. I am tempted to give you some heat for your order of assembly and handling of some components, but who cares as long as it works in the end.
9:15 I have often seen this behaviour with switching regulators; for whatever reason they fail to bootstrap their startup without a much larger than expected current available in the first few micro/milliseconds (and get stuck drawing a lot of current), but once the converter is running they drop down to the expected load. It does make it a bit difficult to test newly built designs like this because you end up needing to provide a lot more current limit on your lab power supply than you'd like, but once you know the cause it's easy to work around it.
Great device Adrian! Very cool!
Okay. Wow. Simply WOW. Test chips, dump binaries ... Amazing. I looked a long time for something like this in the price range < 200£
Just a quick note about those little USBasp devices you were trying to use.
Many of them are actually cheap Chinese clones of the real USBasp project and run a junk firmware that only works with a sketchy Chinese program called PROGisp. Hardware wise, they are identical and it is possible to reflash their firmware with the proper USBasp one, but it requires an Atmel programmer to do so in the first place.
A USBasp is perfectly capable of flashing a mega2560 chip, as far as I am aware, there is no such limitation on any Atmel programmer.
Great video. World have loved to see you test some of you bad chips from your bad parts box
Those Hitachi RAM chips are used in the ZX 48 Spider Spectrum PCB.
Please don’t use the wide eyed thumbnail gimmick. This channel is credible (and incredible) and above such trickery.
1:30 - Wow, you soldered in that surface-mount processor SUPER FAST! :)
Loved your video. Can you tell me where you got your plug in sb card module. The ones I find all have an adapter cable with them. Thanks.
Shame you kept your left hand over the Vcc LED (RED) as when I test an Vintage TTL chip the Vcc light goes out, so I assume it has some current limiting going on, I could see if yours stayed on, but great video, thanks for spending the time to do this.
A rotary encoder would be a nice addition for chip selection.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 depending on the speed of response from the device, maybe it would be viable to make a small module that would take care of the rotary encoder and program it to work dependent on rotation speeds by sending fast series of signals the faster you rotate it, like some oscilloscopes/hardware doo-daas do it. If it's not fast enough with responding, then that falls apart.
@14:45 - Worth noting that there are IBM 30-pin SIMMs (256Kb, 512Kb, and rare 1Mb) that are a slightly different pinout (for incorporating the Presence-Detect - 'PD' - scheme) that would need another SIMM adapter.
Or just another menu item if the adapter passes pins through 1:1 .
The overall design of this device reminds me of this cheap "M-Tester" electronic component tester I have. You can plug just about any basic electronic component in, press one button and it will auto-detect what's plugged in and its value (not accurately). I wonder if a similar auto-detection capability is possible for logic chip families, e.g. instead of selecting 74565 if you could just select 74xx and have it figure out it's a 565. (I doubt this is possible across different families because of the different power connections)
Great video of a very impressive piece of kit.
Maybe the usb port can be used for a serial connection. That way this board can be controlled by a pc with a virtual port over usb like with an arduino?
Here’s (really) is a helpful hint: group your ICs by part #, then you can batch test all the parts with that part # without having to go back-and-forth through the RCTP’s menu system! 😍
Super clean work , well done. As I’m new to electronics as a hobby, please forgive me if this is a stupid question… You use a magnetic hardware tray to stage various components prior to installing on PCB. Will it cause any issues if the wire of individual components, i.e. resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc. become magnetized? I’m assuming it’s possible the wire can become magnetized because you also used a mag tray for your off cuts and they appear to be magnetic. Thanks for time and the great video. Entertaining and uber informative. Thanks again- Jason Burchell
An interesting thing about the compatibility search tool included is that you can use it to find compatible parts for chips you don't know about when repairing a machine.
@Mr Guru which is why I said "that you don't know about"; it's a good reference guide for beginners or for people that thread into unknown territory (e.g. a guy who has repaired a lot of C64s doesn't have to know about compatibility of seemingly bespoke parts for a different device).
@Mr Guru I don't know if I'm not explaining myself adequatedly or what. What I mean is that the list allows two kinds of people to know compatibility:
1) total begginers
2) people with experience that start going outside their area of expertise
My example with the C64 was meant to be taken as "a person who knows everything to know about the chips found in a certain kind of machine, e.g. a C64, that starts tinkering with machines that have chips other than those, perhaps none in common". Said hypothetical person would be able to find substitutes for any chip they already know, but throw at them something they are seeing for the very first time and they are going to be clueless (until they go dig the info, which this thing helps to make way easier).
@Mr Guru You have to know those files exist and what the RCT is (wikipedia offers no solutions). Not everyone starts from a position of knowledge and not everyone obtains the same learnings from their experience. Things you believe obvious may be new info for someone who's never needed them before, even if they have a lot of experience.
Please check the terms "curse of knowledge" and "déformation professionnelle".
Using those tactile switches like that will eventually break them. The plastic white top to the switch with the 4 black dots will eventually snap off. There are other tactile twitches with metal tops that are a bit stronger, but I still don't suggest using the switches that way. I replace dozens of these a week at my job due to people trying to use the switches this way. Also the tall tactile switches snap off easily if they are bumped, I suggest trading the tall ones for all short tactile switches, as it would two bird one stone the issues I've listed.
This is not a complaint, I enjoyed the video. I'm now looking at buying one of these testers myself for my job :D As this would be very helpful !
Just wanted to help with issues you may face using those switches from my experience :)
great video. I am going to get one to try out.
Tank you. I have been looking for something like this for a year 😊
Btw your videos are great 🤓
I saw Noels review of this thing too a while back. Looks like around $200 + for everything , not including any adapters, and locating some parts can be a pain. I may wait a bit. Also Adrian, this video alone may cause them to completely sell out of stock of the main board lol. You're going to turn into a Mr. Carlson's lab, where every device you show on video sells out immediately online afterward or the used ebay price goes into orbit... lol
Thanks for this great video. I finally received mine and have it built/firmware uploaded. For some reason the power LED doesn't work so got some investigating to do but I'm really excited to finally have this. I was woundering if you could do a follow-up video on setting up databases on the SD card. Looking forward to getting MAME database setup. I have some arcade PCB's that need fixing.
Awesome content dude
Skip the assembly? NO WAY! :)
Kinda wish they'd put a rotary encoder in there. Going through the list with that would be a lot simpler.
I'm thinking about buying this and that would be an immediate mod to make. Still, viability depends on the firmware, probably. If I can send really short, fast series of pulses to make a software acceleration depending on the speed the encoder is rotated in, then that's a mod I'm willing to try out.
Otherwise, if it comes out slower in practice than zooming through options by holding the switch, then... well.
Great episode!
You've got a dead parts bin, don't you? Let's see what happens with some of those!
gotta love the GERMAN OS Setting in the Document at 18:29 :D :D
You have the ICSP header already, you could use two of those pins for a serial interface.
That is a FANTASTIC tool. I feel like the interface could benefit from a rotary encoder though. 🤔
1702's are used in the front panel of some ALTAIR 8800 and similar computers from that era. Also often used as a state machine so it's entirely possible there is nothing especially sensible in the way of code inside
I have no need for this, but it seems really cool!
Maybe a rotary encoder with selectable increments or a 'jump to' feature would help with cycling through all the various chips in its database.
A very very very cool device and video. 👍
Saw this on NRL a while back. Great device
The $40 option isn't a fully assembled PCB - it's the PCB with the ATmega2560 installed and programmed, along with a micro USB and the fuses set properly. You'll still have to buy all the other components, and install them. If you're going to go the DC/DC route that Adrian uses, you can save some money by not buying the components for all of the various power inputs, as well as omitting the components underneath the DC/DC board.
I think the best version of that device would include a connection for a raspberry pi as a daughter board that could run a web server which would host the big chip database, the documentation, the sd card contents, and a streamlined control page to operate it from.
Were I used to work we bought a chip tester that can find the function of an IC. it worked great. this is similar.
You are right about it needing a serial connection to a PC.
Serial interface was my immediate thought too. There are too many options for just 4 buttons.
The "Start of text" checkbox in the searching tool sounds like it's what's requiring you to enter the W before 24257 at 23:00. Try unchecking that and searching again? The list of equivalent part numbers sounds extremely useful; now if only we had that for other types of chips =P
Yeah that was exactly it. It's off by default too when you load that page, so I'm not sure why I even ticked that box.
It was like watching a time-lapse Heathkit build!
@3:42 Those trays can also be purchased at Harbor Freight. I bought my for 69 cents.
Wish I had this back in the 1980s repairing Lowrey Organs!!
Awesome device. I hope they offer purchasing pre-assembled versions.
25:20 just stick a flathead screw driver into each side hole and the cover will open and allow you to slide back so you can insert the cart into the tester. It won't damage anything since it's all plastic.