My first weekend of electronics
So I got my breadboard kit in and started building it. I was super excited!
I got everything out and started to organize it. I saw in the booklet that came with the clock module that some parts you got extras of. Specifically the capacitors and LEDs. So I decided that I needed storage for these. That led to a trip to my local big box home store to get a nice parts organizer.
So, I grabbed a Craftsman CMST40739 - 39 drawer organizer, but upon opening it I came to realize that it has divider slots, but no dividers!
This is the first drawer setup like that I've come across. Most others have too many that you end up throwing away. A little annoying, especially since I was hoping to put multiple parts in each drawer.
Luckily I found that this was a common complaint, and that some solutions already exist. Since I don't have a 3D printer, I went with a set of these AUTUMN Dividers designed for the 30 drawer variant, which will work for the small drawers on the top just fine. I don't need any for the larger drawers based on what I've got in there so far.
Next up I decided that I needed to do a little soldering... On my breadboard project... Yeah, I know.
I really didn't like the way the power connected to the breadboard. And I had bought a multi-pack of Elegoo Jumper Wires, which I figured would be useful in the long run. So I took a red and black wire with a male end and soldered them into the power cable instead of the tip and breadboard wires crimped into it. I just like the feel of if a LOT better.
OK, so on to actually building this thing!
I took me about 4 hours to walk through the 30 minutes of Ben Eater's clock module videos. I learned a few things along the way:
- Some capacitors are polarized.
- Some of those polarities don't look like you think, so always check!
- They don't work backwards.
- The 555 timers don't like when said capacitors are in backwards.
- 555 timers don't like heat.
- My soldering skills are severely lacking.
I made a few small changes from Ben's design to deal with some things I had run into. Since I'm completely new to this, maybe there are better plans, but this is what I did.
I found the astable timer wouldn't stay at the same pace constantly, it seemed to be fluctuating based on the temperature, so I've added one of the small heat sinks that I bought for my Raspberry Pi to it for now and that seems to help. But to that end, I found that I needed to replace the 0.1uF Capacitor with a 1uF Capacitor to slow it down to a point that made sense, even with the variable resistor maxed out once it got any amount of heat going.
I also found after a lot of poking around that I had mis-wired one of the logic circuits up, so my push button step would override the pulse. Took a while to figure it out, including just looking at the video on pause and tracing all my wires around to see I was off by one pin. So I'm learning to watch for that a lot better now.
Next steps:
Now that I have the clock module working, and a better feel for how breadboards work, I'm going to bust out the 6502 kit. It also has a lot of pieces, that I'll break down and sort into the drawers.
I found that storing the ICs from this kit in the tubes fit fine in the drawers, but the 65xx chips don't fit as well, so I ordered some Anti-Static Foam that I'm planning to line the drawers with to stick the chips into to organize them.
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