Hey folks, I have 2 units here, that I have bought, and both have now become non working, so when I talked to my reseller, they told me to pay and extra $200 USD to replace the broken clip. Well that is unacceptable to me, so I am gonna try taking non working, and gonna try to get 1 Working.

My problem is how to test the device correctly, and what all the pieces I should test are, and what I would need to test them.

Any help here labelling these would be awesome.

Thanks
DarkOverlord

 

Hi,

If you need the "units", just get new ones. Even if you had markings on the chips (clips?), the cost of test equipment would exceed the replacement cost.

Maybe you should consider an altermative source.

 

Why cant i just test all the parts on the chip, and find out what is faulty? Cant I just use the multimeter and test everything that way? The IC's are still good on one of them, I just need to find out which one has the rest of the stuff that is good on it.

 

Originally posted by darkoverlord@May 10 2006, 08:01 AM
Why cant i just test all the parts on the chip, and find out what is faulty? Cant I just use the multimeter and test everything that way? The IC's are still good on one of them, I just need to find out which one has the rest of the stuff that is good on it.

[post=16968]Quoted post[/post]​

Listen very carefully. You cannot use a multimeter to test the function of complex IC's. Even if you knew what the IC's were, constructing a pass fail test for each IC in operation on a board would be difficult if not impossible. I've had this same discussion with respect to cellphones and creative resourceful technicians in third world countries with lots of time on their hands. With the right equipment and support it just might make economic sense to do this on a large scale. Consider what your own time is worth. Let us say that with salary and benfits your time is worth $50.00 per hour. This means if you spend more than 4 hours on this task you are literally throwing money down a rathole. That's just my HO, yours could vary.

 

If its not 1 of the 3 voltage regulators on the board, I'd forget it.

 

To put it in perspective, here is the datasheet for just one chip on your smart-clip:

Atmega128

In addition, you'll need a copy of the machine code so that you can know what to look for at what time.

I'd stick with Gadget's advice, if it were my smart-clip. (And I've got O-scopes.)

$200 is a darn good price for a smart-clip anyway. Best I've seen is $250. (Except for the clones and the junkers.)