Free PCB Sunday: Bus Blaster

We go through a lot of prototype PCBs, and end up with lots of extras that we’ll never use. Every Sunday we give away a few PCBs from one of our past or future projects, or a related prototype. Our PCBs are made through Seeed Studio’s Fusion board service.

This is the first version of the Bus Blaster JTAG programmer. It’s been power-up tested and the FT2232 enumerates on the PC. One of the buffer footprints has mask over pads, so you’ll have to scrape it away before soldering. We have two extra PCBs to give away this week, just ask for one in the comments.

Testing update: OpenOCD tests went well this week, there’s a working OpenOCD .cfg file example on the Bus Blaster wiki. Logic analyzer captures show that the buffers are working correctly. Next step is to test a known-working target provided by IPenguin. If the tests go well, a small batch of test hardware could potentially be in production by Friday.

Are you interested in blogging with us? Drop us a line. This probably won’t be a paid position, but you get a back stage pass, free PCBs, and free projects. US and international bloggers are welcome.

Some stuff:

• Yes, we’ll mail it anywhere in the world!
• Be sure to use a real e-mail in the address field so we can contact you for shipping info.
• First come, first serve. If we can’t contact the first commenters, or there’s no reply within 24 hours, we move down the list. You could consider making a request even if it looks like all the PCBs are gone.
• Limit one PCB per address per month please.
• Like everything else on this site, PCBs are offered without warranty.

We try to stagger free PCB Sunday posts so every time zone has a chance to participate, but the best way to see the post first is to subscribe to the RSS feed.