While the CH341A Mini Programmer is a very versatile device - not only can it be used as an SPI flash programmer, but also as a UART and possibly even an AVR programmer, it is known to have a design flaw, probably due to a misinterpretation of the fairly vague CH341A datasheet by the people who have designed the Mini Programmer.
Posts filed under "Broken stuff"
Atom feed for this category3.3 V fix for the black CH341A Mini Programmer without lifting a pin
2020-12-27 11:04Schematic for the C64 power supply project
2016-04-06 16:13I have been asked for a schematic of my C64 power supply a couple of times. So here it is.
The correct value for the transformer's primary rating depends on your mains voltage, of course.
For a detailed description of my circuit, please have a look at the original article.
The correct value for the transformer's primary rating depends on your mains voltage, of course.
For a detailed description of my circuit, please have a look at the original article.
Commodore 64 Power Supply Repair
2012-06-03 15:13The repair I'm describing here involves mains voltage, which can be very dangerous if not handled properly.
Do not even think about trying this yourself if you are not absolutely sure what you are doing!
The original power supply of my C64 was broken. Unfortunately it was one of those power supplies where everything inside the case has been glued into one big block filling the entire case. Repairing such a mess seemed next to impossible.
Sapphire Radeon HD6850 repair
2011-11-07 15:11Replacement of dying fan on a Sapphire Radeon HD6850
I've got a Sapphire Radeon HD6850 graphics card where the cooling fan was dying. It did no longer cool properly and at the same time caused extensive vibrations and noise. With that fan, under load the card immediately reached out for temperatures above 100 °C. I did not want that to happen and so I decided to replace the fan, which turned out to be not as easy as I would have guessed.
I've got a Sapphire Radeon HD6850 graphics card where the cooling fan was dying. It did no longer cool properly and at the same time caused extensive vibrations and noise. With that fan, under load the card immediately reached out for temperatures above 100 °C. I did not want that to happen and so I decided to replace the fan, which turned out to be not as easy as I would have guessed.
Dockstar repair with serial cable
2010-10-13 13:49I recently bought a Seagate Freeagent Go Dockstar, which is basically a SheevaPlug device with less RAM and Flash memory for a lot less money (~ $25). It comes with the same 1.2 GHz Feroceon 88FR131 CPU as the SheevaPlug. Unfortunately my Dockstar device arrived in dead condition.
When I first started the device its LED was flashing green for a few seconds (boot loader phase) and then began flashing amber. That is all that was happening. It did not aquire an IP address from my DHCP server nor was it reachable on its default IP address.
As I did not want to bring it back to the store where I bought it and because I intended not to use the pre-installed Pogoplug software anyway, I opened the device to check what was going on.
When I first started the device its LED was flashing green for a few seconds (boot loader phase) and then began flashing amber. That is all that was happening. It did not aquire an IP address from my DHCP server nor was it reachable on its default IP address.
As I did not want to bring it back to the store where I bought it and because I intended not to use the pre-installed Pogoplug software anyway, I opened the device to check what was going on.