Rat Farts!

[Omega-TI]

Gremlins!!!

 

Exactly so! The nearest I can determine is that this was the same type of trouble I originally had with the el-cheapo PLCC socket that came with my MiniPRO, they just plain suck. I re-pulled the IC, cleaned the contacts and now everything works perfectly without fault.

 

I know others out there have had some flaky Nano-PEB's, if you are one of them, you might consider checking out and cleaning the PLCC sockets and chips, that just might be the origin of all your mysterious Gremlins. Thanks guys for all your help. Once I noticed it worked once without touching it, I immediately suspected what the intermittent issue was.

 

 

[atrax27407]

I had much the same thing happen with a couple of disk drives. They wouldn't work and I changed nothing and put them back in the PEB and everything suddenly worked.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Your problem has another possibility...

 

Omega, you and a group of TI'ers are close to congregating in a Faire-like environment. Indeed, you may be experiencing the "Faire Effect" where hardware mysteriously stops working then magically, a few hours later, returns to operational status as if nothing happened. Long-term side effects often include sector 0 corruption of your most important disk or partition, and the occasional disappearance of saved files. Demonstrations are particularly vulnerable during TI activities.

 

It is better to shake out the gremlins now than during the day of the PNW gathering

[Tursi]

Here it is, need more angles?

 

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

It doesn't help your problem to say, but that's a beautiful picture. crystal clear and detailed enough to be helpful!

 

Personally it looks to me like some of those joints could handle being reflowed, though I'd use a soldering iron, not the heat gun. (Unless the socket is rated for heat, you can melt it.)

 

Totally understand if you don't want to touch it now, of course, but if it dies again...

[Tursi]

Omega, you and a group of TI'ers are close to congregating in a Faire-like environment. Indeed, you may be experiencing the "Faire Effect" where hardware mysteriously stops working then magically, a few hours later, returns to operational status as if nothing happened. Long-term side effects often include sector 0 corruption of your most important disk or partition, and the occasional disappearance of saved files. Demonstrations are particularly vulnerable during TI activities.

it's true! This also happened to my demo of the UberGROM. We even had it working in the room once, but it failed 100% for the demo. Didn't work again until I got home.

[+jedimatt42]

it's true! This also happened to my demo of the UberGROM. We even had it working in the room once, but it failed 100% for the demo. Didn't work again until I got home.

 

I hate that this is a true thing. It defies logic. My last software demo in front of a customer totally imploded, and the customer understood this truth so much so, that they deployed the product and I resumed the demonstration on their equipment. Which turned out to make a better demo against the customer's data.

 

Omega, I'm glad your agony has resolved.

[ckoba]

It doesn't help your problem to say, but that's a beautiful picture. crystal clear and detailed enough to be helpful!

 

Personally it looks to me like some of those joints could handle being reflowed, though I'd use a soldering iron, not the heat gun. (Unless the socket is rated for heat, you can melt it.)

 

Totally understand if you don't want to touch it now, of course, but if it dies again...

 

Well, he's selling it, so the problem would be passed along to the buyer.

 

Concur that there are a few bad solder joints there. Left-hand side (bottom) looks like it had a battery leak on it, and the trace at 12 o'clock may not be soldered at all.

 

I'd have a go with the needle point on my Hakko and a roll of 0.3mm solder, but I'm a perfectionist. If Omega lacks the equipment, or (like the rest of us) has eyes and hands going, then I also concur that it's probably best to leave well enough alone -- but I'd tell the buyer that there's bad solder joints on the socket, so when (not if) it fails next time the guy will know what to try first.

[Omega-TI]

It doesn't help your problem to say, but that's a beautiful picture. crystal clear and detailed enough to be helpful!

 

Totally understand if you don't want to touch it now, of course, but if it dies again...

 

Thanks Tursi, I thought that photo came out rather nice myself.

 

Yeah, I'm holding off now it's working great now so I don't want to tempt fate.

I'll still plan to try and sell it at Fest West (now for a reduced price due to the recent incident) and with full disclosure of what happened, but with the reduced price it'll have to be as-is.

[dphirschler]

It must've been the threat of a heat gun that did it.

 

Darryl