
At long last (BatchPCB shipped them over two months ago), the 16 x 16 boards have arrived. They were most likely a victim of the postal strikes here in the UK.
I dragged Ishani’s Rev2 to the Big Chill this past weekend. Initially, we were planning on making a run of the stripped-down Rev3 to hand out, but a stack of other committments got in the way.
In the process, I learned some valuable lessons:
Rev2 is up and running, blinking and blending away on Ishani’s desk.
After much cogitation, it would appear I swapped data in and data out to the MAX6960 while swapping pins in the firmware to match the new board layout. I can never remember from which perspective those are supposed to be interpreted.
As always, there are still some issues with Rev2:
Pushing forward with Rev3 (which should be renamed as it shares very little with the previous designs) in the meantime.

We are experiencing some delays getting Rev2 working. It passes all of its self tests with the exception of the display. Communication between the two boards appears to be the same as with Rev1 but fails to produce an image.
Pleased to have my logic analyzer around. Beats the hell out of chicken guts or tea leaves for figuring out what’s gone wrong with inter-chip communication. There may be subtleties to timing that I have missed.
…and lookin’ pretty sweet (will post pictures shortly). I put the tabs on the display board the wrong way around, so the USB connection and switches will be obscured by the strap. I think we’ll assemble two anyway, for fear of never getting anything done.
Still having trouble sourcing the MAX6960s for any reasonable price, which is a shame. I’ve not been able to produce quite the same display quality with Rev3’s ISR-driven approach. Specifically, balancing the red and green is proving very difficult.
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