So we came into the lab last night and this morning and we've been
working hard on getting testbeds setup.  I've managed to solder one of
each of the surface-mount components to surfboards for testing.  Some
chips did not fit on the surfboard because they were either too narrow
or too wide to fit the pads right, but I took some wire and soldered
it to the pins.  We only had one component loss, we lost on OPA27 due
to a broken pin, everything else went smoothly.  The only component I
have not soldered is the switching voltage regulator that has the pads
underneath, I'm going to have to look into some technique and ask
Chris about how to go about soldering that.


Vinny and Chris have been attempting to test the CMS with mixed
results.  They are able to get some waveforms that were spot on with
what they saw in multisim while making the circuit, they haven't been
able to get desired logarithmic output quite yet but are extensively
testing individual components and tweaking the circuit.  I will let
you know how that goes as we learn more.


Testing of other systems such as Power and VVS will also begin as soon
as possible alongside CMS testing.  One thing to note, we're running
out of surfboards, we have two left.  It would be nice to have more in
case we need to setup multiple testbeds.  Also, I don't know if they
have surfboards with smaller spacing between pads which would be
convenient for the smaller ships that were too narrow for the
surfboards, same for the ones that were too wide.


On a side note Alan has started working Utilboard to get familiar with
PCB layout, he and Daniel are beginning collaboration to get our
system laid out.  I'm not sure what kind of progress the CPU team has
made.


I'll let you know more as it develops,


Matthew Landavazo