Hi Jake, and thanks for the links and info on the AY-AT, especially any info on how and where the board's vias and 'invisible' interconnections might be located? lol, I guess that's asking a bit too much. I'm still reading this thread, up to 3700-somethingth
post so far, so maybe I'll get there...
This is my third tester, the first 2 I bought as DIY kits and had no trouble at all doing a self-test as soon as I turned them on. The 1st one has the atmega168a-pu chip and is also socketed, which I think is a nice feature, since I can't imagine me replacing one of those smd atmega328's, which is what the 2nd kit I bought has in it.
So, now I'm kinda wishing I'd just got another kit rather than get this one that pretty much needs a complete soldering redo, I'd have had it finished days ago now, rather than be still bickering with some clown 12K miles away who assumes (rightly) that there's nothing I can do about their crappy service/product.
There, I feel better now, sorry bout that.
Anyway, as far as soldering and resoldering goes, I had mixed success with the second tester - after using it for many moons, mainly checking capacitors, it got to where only 2 of the leads could be used (it would say "unknown or damaged part" if you tried using it), so I resoldered the chipholder, treating all pins w/good dose from a flux-pen, and It did go back to normal for a few uses, but then after a few days started flaking out again; so I resoldered again, with a little higher temp and when I was through the damn thing didn't work at all any more. It seemed to me that maybe some connections inside the ckt bd. that need to wick in some solder for some reason don't wick in enough and some corrosion process starts up - I wonder if they get exposed to salt air at any time in their life.
Thanks for the ideas and the links, not to mention all the work that you put into assembling it.