Great Joy in Mudville!

Good news. My new main board arrived from Techzone yesterday and I immediately sequestered myself in the fortress of Solitude (formerly the daughter's playroom) to check it out.

I plugged the USB/ITE cable in and, with breathless antici..........pation, compiled and attempted to download the firmware. It was apparent from the start that something new was going on since the red LED began blinking along with the steady green one that I have been seeing all along. The board behaved exactly as described in all the online resources and the firmware loaded successfully. The red LED then settled down into a steady 1 Hz blink just as it should.

So, long story short, I had a bad board. I don't believe that the board was bad when I received it. There were a set of check marks on the back indicating that it had passed all the testing prior to shipping. I think I may have sent some current through it incorrectly when I was figuring out how to wire everything up. Techzone was not the culprit here, just my own clumsiness (again).

I have a long weekend now so I hope to work out all the remaining small things and have the beast up and running by Sunday. As long as family responsibilities don't get in the way. Amazingly, my wife has been very understanding, and tonight she actually referred to the Mendel as my "Happiness Machine" when I was coming down here to work on it!