Good minimal 18F2550 board
For PIC 18F2550 minimal board v2
As promised, the 18F2550 minimal board v2 arrived via airmail from France to Australia very quickly - just 6 days.
It was a bit of a challenge to solder because, even though the capacitors, resistors and LED were in the 1206 SMD size, there were five of them close together in parallel. I finally beat those five into submission with solder paste and hot air. The next challenge was the mini USB connector's pins. Hot air seemed to be the way to go, but I ended up with the right-most 3 pins bridged and the tantalum capacitor in front of them made using desoldering braid impossible - I removed the capacitor and then used a 1mm soldering iron bit to fix the bridges and put back the capacitor.
The PCB is of good quality as evidenced by the fact that the traces/pads survived my replacement of the capacitor, not to mention my 5 attempts at soldering and then desoldering the nano tactile switch.
Then the moment of truth... I connected a PICkit 2 and launched its standalone software program and ... it detected the 2550 and could program and erase it. Be aware that the red LED is not, as I mistakenly assumed before checking the schematic, a power LED. It's connected to PGD/RB7/pin 28 so is active during programming operations but not otherwise (unless you program it).
All in all, a wee bit challenging for the over 50s with less than perfect eyesight and probably not recommended for the SMD beginner who is looking for something relatively easy to solder. Then again, it is definitely good practice :-)
