Tatung Computer Forum

I’m going to box mine up and send it off to MCG (if they are brave enough ) to have the keyboard and associated weirdness looked at.
I can always ask them to send it on to you afterwards to look at and prod? And obviously cover the costs of you sending it back to me afterwards. And some beer money.

I have tried the SD out of my ‘spand and another one from elsewhere.

Edit - my SD cards are actually micro SD cards in an adaptor, if that makes any difference?

I use micro from time to time, I don't think it makes much of a difference. Ship your einSDein+eproms to me - along with your card if you don't mind - and I'll check it. If MCG wants it then they get priority, so perhaps ask first.

vanpeebles' board has already had a check and clean bill of health so I'm completely stumped.

That said - if you want to then why not ship your board+all EPROMS too please peet, and I'll have another look/compare to lardo's.

I built myself one last night but then promptly killed it. Sigh.

Yes can do

I've still not forgotten to send mine back, I can send it back with all the roms apart from the one in the TC01? I can't do any heavy lifting at the mo

A lack of heavy lifting definitely rules out moving one of these then! Blimey.

Mine was nearly 10KG once boxed.

My iffy TC-01 is currently a monitor stand and covered in stuff too I think I just have the one rom in there.

Another einSDein user is reporting the same problems

I'm doing some investigation and I think I'm on to something.

Can you please have a look at the PIC chip and let me know its type? I want to know if any of the boards with issues have a particular model number on there. You will need some magnification and a bright light. The text can be read from certain angles. I'm especially interested in whether the devices have a -50 (dash-fifty) designation. The type is written like so:

PIC32MX
150F128D

then either

-50/PT

or

-I/PT

thanks!

sirmorris wrote: ↑Sun Mar 08, 2020 10:57 am
Can you please have a look at the PIC chip and let me know its type?

Mine is with MCG so have passed on the question. Will let you know as soon as I hear.

Thanks LB, also others for the replies by email.

Alas the answers shot my theory down in flames - which in a way is a good thing because it's spurred me on to investigate deeper to see if I could see what was going on. Which I think I did.

I have to apologise because I was slow to blame the einSDein design. Every board had tested fine before being sent out. I assumed that there wasn't a problem, and didn't think that an issue could have been masked by my particular set-up. When I tested the boards I assumed that every card would behave roughly like the one I was using, a relatively modern 16gb sandisk. Since then I've tried a 32mb (yes, megabyte) one, some 64mb and a couple of 2 & 4gb cards. All seemed to check out - perhaps because my test set only includes cards that work with all my various devices. All the ones that didn't work were thrown out ages ago because I assumed they were old and defective - not that there could have been an issue with the thing they were inserted into. Hubris!

Anyhow to cut a long story short, err that is once it's already been a long story and you've read it anyway, I've managed to reproduce something like what you guys are seeing on one of my boards. A bit more extreme but nonetheless it fits roughly with the pattern - unreliable reboots, works for a while then doesn't respond to reboots, white light on the whole time at boot. The other boards I have all work, so I have to assume it's down to 'tolerances' /waves hands vaguely/

I've spent the day with an in-circuit debugger and found what I think is the issue. A test board is off to someone tomorrow and I hope to have great news shortly after. The sad irony is that I'd anticipated something like this issue and speculatively placed pads on the board for an optional component in case it cropped up. A small mercy I guess Anyhow, I was nearly right and I'm one pull-up short of a full set.

So thanks for your patience everyone - a day or two more and we'll be a bit closer to an answer! If I've cracked it then it's a very simple mod to the board and we're off again.



C

Excellent news Sir Morris! We all appreciate your time in creating these things and supporting them.