Fixing bad AVR fuses the hard(er) way

Lesson for the day: always put the big ICs in sockets. I fitted a crystal to the AVR on the interface board yesterday and managed to brick the chip by setting the fuse values to use an oscillator that didn’t exist. Thanks for the day: the person who invented desoldering braid. It’s awesome and got the pins clean enough that I could just lever the old chip out.

I’ve now fitted a socket, a new processor, and gone to a 12 MHz crystal. This should take care of the serial baud rate problems when the chip is cold and gives me a bit more resolution on the control signals out to the servos.

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Michael Hope
Software Engineer