Attempting FV-1 on the breadboard

[p_wats]

A small victory in my battle with FV-1 build issues - I got a simple test circuit working on a breadboard, so I can use the EZ FV-1 adapter to check my graveyard of "dead" chips. Turns out the first one works absolutely fine, so that gives me hope.

I basically followed the schematic in the FV-1 datasheet, but simplified things a bit by removing the EEPROM and any program switching. Word of advice: make sure you buy 2.54mm spaced pin headers and not 2.00mm for the EZ FV-1 board. Otherwise they won't fit in a row and you have to instead break them off individually and solder them that way (not that I'd know anything about that. Shh).

Next up, to desolder the FV-1 chips currently in non-working Arachnid and Deflector builds to see if it really is the chip in each circuit causing my problems. Fingers crossed!

 

[p_wats]

It's pretty trivial to add the EEPROM, so I ended up doing that too, just in case, as I did have 1 FV-1 chip that only worked with internal programs.

 

[p_wats]

I've got this up and running pretty well now, but still most of the chips I'm testing are not passing any signal. I've two good chips that are working fine in this set up, which is good, as one of them had been presumed dead. However, I've got 5(!) others that do nothing.

I find that a bit strange, as at least 2 of them "worked" to some degree--they just exhibited strange symptoms, like a whine or some static over top of the FV-1 programs.

I'll probably build this tagboard circuit anyway with sockets for the EZ FV-1 PCB to test: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2018/04/fv-1-pedal.html

Unfortunately, I tried one of the working chips in my non-working Deflector build, as all signs pointed to the chip, but the new chip didn't fix that circuit, so I'm back to the drawing board there (I removed the FV-1 again and it still works fine in my breadboard at least).

 

[phi1]

Wow... very impressed with your perseverance soldering and desoldering all those fv-1 chips.

 

[p_wats]

Wow... very impressed with your perseverance soldering and desoldering all those fv-1 chips.

Ha. I just can't bear to admit that all these expensive chips are dead! I've been told over and over how hardy these guys are assuming you don't feed them the wrong voltage, etc. but I seem to be able to kill them with a glance, so I figured it was worth the effort to see if there are any that are salvageable.