Output Board, Initial Review

Here's the bad news. My digital Pentax has given up the ghost. I dropped it in Boston and it's been barely alive ever since. It's now officially unusable. This means no assembly pics, but I may do some scans of the board.

I've de-populated the original (i.e. ruined) as fast as I could, and compared the two boards.

Here's the objective review:

The prototype is really really good. The multipath output needs to move about a third of a millimeter. Otherwise mechanically it's a really good match for the original. Not only that, it's really a beautiful piece of copper, tin and fiberglass. It's not perfect though. Here are the issues I've found so far:

• The fixed L and R outputs. Fortunately you can cross the resistors that go to them very easily.
  
• One of the scope outputs has the last trace on the wrong side. Fixable with electrical tape.
  
• The holes for the switch are really really tight. I had to use a pair of Robo Grips to finish seating them. I probably could have avoided using solder. :)
  
• I broke the capacitor. I'm replacing it with a 0.1uF metal film. I hope that's good enough! :) It's the right physical size anyway. :) The original one says 250 one one line and then underneath it u 1.
  

These are not show stopper issues, specially if you weren't going to use the scope outputs.

The one show stopper I do have is that the 100 watt soldering gun I have doesn't come even close to putting out enough heat to solder on the Cardas jacks. Tomorrow I'm off to Radio Shack for a 150/250 watt soldering iron. If that doesn't work, I'm screwed, because I am not about to buy a solder pot for this thing!

I'm making fixes to the design, but I am only going to make another run if there is significant interest. Otherwise, this run of six boards is all there will be.