As I previously mentioned, I skipped Lesson 8.  It is generally reckless to solder something to a PCB without having first tried it out on a breadboard, but since most of the lessons already confirmed to me that the SX, the 7-segment LED driver, the resistor ladders, etc all work as advertised, I felt I didn’t want to keep doing it just to get more breadboard practice.

I’m not new to soldering.  I’ve got a half-completed 2m amateur radio transceiver in my closet (note to self: finish the thing already).  So, in light of that, this wasn’t a challenging lesson.  For that, I’m grateful.  As I’ve said before, when you’re learning to fly, it’s less important to know the mechanics of taking off as it is to know how to get out of a stall and spin.  Knowing a few things about how to solder, remove solder, test things, etc, was very handy.  For the most part, I didn’t get too many problems.  One of the “seats” in a DIP socket came out and the wires for the 9V battery broke repeatedly.  Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

So, below are some pictures of my completed XGS Pico Edition and it running a demo on my LCD TV.  Two things that are important to note– the LCD TV warning, while not as serious, should be followed.  When the Racer City game logic kicks in, my TV gets fussy and starts adding color noise; a standard CRT does not.  Second, the XGS PE uses the SX28 and the XGS ME (the PE’s “predecessor”) uses the SX52, which has more memory and more registers.  Most of the downloadable demos on the XGameStation site, therefore, require portage to work.

Some resisors for the 7-segment missing...TO RADIO SHACK!

My first run of the XGS PE

All in all, I’m pleased to have everything on a PCB.  I feel like I’ve learned a lot at this point, and now I’ll get to enjoy a few labs on programming this platform.  I’ll probably start tonight.

In the meantime, the parts of my brain dedicated to learning about hardware design can start scoping out a future project.