Revisions to the Pages/Documentation

This page provides a log of activities in concurrent building, debugging, and documenting the kit, identifying changed web pages and describing the changes/status.

Page Revised Date What Changed
USB10/07/2009 Updated firmware and PC USB Control software references to reflect the new approach using the PE0FKO architecture.
Home10/07/2009 Added link to allow user to download a PDF version of these notes. Tx to Craig AB9IV.
USB10/02/2009 Added caveat on soldering U2 Socket to ensure good ground. Tx to Nico ZS1KT!
BPFs 6/1/2009 Clarified testpoints in T100 continuity test.
TX to Jan Moller K6FM for suggestion.
USB Control 3/31/2009 Removed Rocky Test from USB Stage due to issues with testing USB Control of Si570 before it was installed.
TX to Larry WB4HLX, Peter G3JRH, and others.
Local Oscillator, USB Control 12/19/2008 Moved R6 and R7 out of LO stage and put them in the USB COntrol stage to make pullup resistors available for USB testing.
Tx to Jan G0BBL
Local Oscillator, Dividers 12/8/2008 Corrected expected pk-pk voltage on test of Si570 output. Author's measurements were way off due to cheapo scope and huge overshoot.
Added warning not to try scope measurements without a good scope & probes & adult supervision.
Tx to Van W1WCG for catching this
USB 11/27/2008Changed voltage tests to reflect Jan G0BBL's results,
Added simple USB polling test using AM radio.
Master Schematic, USB11/14/2008Switched FL2 and FL3 locations to agree with latest schematic
Multiple11/04/2008Added link to main schematic from each stage's schematic section.
02 USB Control, 00 BOM, schematic11/04/2008 Updated pages to reflect new zener diode design on USB-2 and USB-3 leads, replacing original 1N5227B values with BZY55s.
02 USB Control10/20/2008 The J3 connector on the v9.0 board is actually two header pins and not the sockets shown in the photos. This oversight will be corrected in subsequent updates to the site's photos.
Thanks to Tony Parks for catching this.
External Connections10/18/2008 Posted completed and tested Final Stage (External Connections and Final Smoke/RX Test pages.
Home10/16/2008 Added link to excellent site with tutorials on all aspects of soldering.
Thanks to Craig KB5UEJ for passing this on to this site.
06 RX Mixers10/17/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 6 (RX Mixers) pages.
05 RX OpAmps10/16/2008 Corrected errorneous reference to R20 (should have been R16) in test of R15/R16 voltage divider.
Thanks to Serge RW3ACQ whose eagle-eye cought the error.
05 RX OpAmps10/16/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 5 (RX Operational Amplifiers) pages.
04 Dividers10/16/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 4 (Dividers) pages.
03 Local Oscillator10/15/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 3 (Local Oscillator) pages.
02 USB Control10/15/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 2 (USB Control) pages.
01 Power Supply10/12/2008 Posted completed and tested Stage 1 (Power Supply) pages.
Home, USB, BOM, Schematic10/08/2008 Modified schematics and BOMs to reflect changes between 9/24 and 10/2 and 10/8 versions.
Modified Terse build notes to reflect changes on 10/8 sheet 3
PS, LO, DIV, OpAmp, Mixer9/29/2008 Added caveat on testing sections of stage build pages:
"This testing section if tentative and the values shown should be taken with a grain of salt, as the author has not yet progressed a build of the V9.0 kit through this stage. When the testing section is validated by the author's build experience, this note will be removed and the change will be noted on the revisions page".
Multiple 9/28/2008 Added links to datasheets for and orientation pictures of SMT ICs.
Multiple 9/26/2008 Added clickable links to the schematics.
e.g., can click on "To Dividers" link on the LO page's Stage schematic and link over to the Dividers page.
Multiple 9/26/2008 Updated theory of operation and summary build instructions; annotated sub-schematics
Multiple 9/26/2008
  • Filled in most pages with enough detail to get started.
  • Have not yet received Beta kit so have not incorporated build experience yet.
  • Most tests are from V8.3 RX.
  • USB tests haven't been vetted yet.
  • Still have to do connection page and page on full Software setup.
All 9/25/2008 baseline