WAH!!! THE RRRRR SOUND FROM THE PEOPLE CUTTING TREES DOWNSTAIRS IS GETTING UNBEARABLE!
Yesterday, i woke up earlier than usual to go to my father's office to work. They had to produce this programming cable in the shortest time possible for their customer, thats why i was brought in to help them. I was there to solder the cables. The office only had enough material to build 4 of that cable so the max was 4.
When i first saw the cable that i had to make, i just went "OH MY!" There was this 20 something over pin D-Sub connector and 2 9Pin D-Sub connector to solder. But the worst thing of all was to solder this 24 pin IC to the connectors and soldering 5 Surface Mount Deviced( SMD) capacitors to the IC. Then also had to use wire wrapping kind of wires to lay the circuitary. Its just too bad that i did not bring a camera along to take photo of that cable, but to me it really is like a piece of art work (:
The first cable came out within an hour or so but the bad thing is there was some circuitary problem with that cable itself. Yu Kuet, an engineer in the office, took out the schematic and traced the paths of the circuit. He realised that he drew the circuit wrongly and had the input to the output and the output to the input. So i took back the cable and the sample and changed 2 pieces of wire and YAY it works.
The second cable came out after another hour and it worked too! Then lunch came. Ate in the office because some of the workers brought food for everyone! Its so nice of them to bring food to share. There was spaghetti, "wu xiang", nuggets, curry and apple. Ate till i was quite full and help pack up a little. Went back to my soldering station and began soldering again.
By now, my eyes were already getting tired and my brain is starting to not think properly. I did not design the circuit so i had to follow the schematics but i'm seriously bad at following stuff if i do not really understand the circuit and how its connected. So i was kind of zombified and robotic when i was soldering the 3rd and 4th cable. Kind of crazy too i must say. Fortunately, the third cable came out perfectly fine.
When i was starting work on the 4th cable, Yu Kuet and Xu Jun had a conference call to someguy overseas through skype. They were discussing some stuff about their ongoing projects. That kept me quite awake while i was soldering the 4th cable. I think if not for that conference call, i would be soldering the wrong stuff already. So out came the 4th cable but sadly, it was not working. So i began tracing and tracing but hmm, all of the connections are right. Then i began searching for shorts. Good thing there is this wonderful invention called a multi meter. I found the short at pin 6 and 7 of the 20 something over pin D-Sub connector. It was due to some leftover solder that shorted them together. Took the soldering iron and desoldered it. Tested it again and yes! it works.
Managed to complete 4 of the cable and seriously im quite proud of myself cause i never imgained that i would be able to solder such small components and wires. But well i did it (: AND OH! I SO LOVE THE SOLDERING IRON AT THE OFFICE! IT HAS TEMPERATURE CONTROL!!!! WOOTS!
Yesterday, i woke up earlier than usual to go to my father's office to work. They had to produce this programming cable in the shortest time possible for their customer, thats why i was brought in to help them. I was there to solder the cables. The office only had enough material to build 4 of that cable so the max was 4.
When i first saw the cable that i had to make, i just went "OH MY!" There was this 20 something over pin D-Sub connector and 2 9Pin D-Sub connector to solder. But the worst thing of all was to solder this 24 pin IC to the connectors and soldering 5 Surface Mount Deviced( SMD) capacitors to the IC. Then also had to use wire wrapping kind of wires to lay the circuitary. Its just too bad that i did not bring a camera along to take photo of that cable, but to me it really is like a piece of art work (:
The first cable came out within an hour or so but the bad thing is there was some circuitary problem with that cable itself. Yu Kuet, an engineer in the office, took out the schematic and traced the paths of the circuit. He realised that he drew the circuit wrongly and had the input to the output and the output to the input. So i took back the cable and the sample and changed 2 pieces of wire and YAY it works.
The second cable came out after another hour and it worked too! Then lunch came. Ate in the office because some of the workers brought food for everyone! Its so nice of them to bring food to share. There was spaghetti, "wu xiang", nuggets, curry and apple. Ate till i was quite full and help pack up a little. Went back to my soldering station and began soldering again.
By now, my eyes were already getting tired and my brain is starting to not think properly. I did not design the circuit so i had to follow the schematics but i'm seriously bad at following stuff if i do not really understand the circuit and how its connected. So i was kind of zombified and robotic when i was soldering the 3rd and 4th cable. Kind of crazy too i must say. Fortunately, the third cable came out perfectly fine.
When i was starting work on the 4th cable, Yu Kuet and Xu Jun had a conference call to someguy overseas through skype. They were discussing some stuff about their ongoing projects. That kept me quite awake while i was soldering the 4th cable. I think if not for that conference call, i would be soldering the wrong stuff already. So out came the 4th cable but sadly, it was not working. So i began tracing and tracing but hmm, all of the connections are right. Then i began searching for shorts. Good thing there is this wonderful invention called a multi meter. I found the short at pin 6 and 7 of the 20 something over pin D-Sub connector. It was due to some leftover solder that shorted them together. Took the soldering iron and desoldered it. Tested it again and yes! it works.
Managed to complete 4 of the cable and seriously im quite proud of myself cause i never imgained that i would be able to solder such small components and wires. But well i did it (: AND OH! I SO LOVE THE SOLDERING IRON AT THE OFFICE! IT HAS TEMPERATURE CONTROL!!!! WOOTS!
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