Ok, I got a reply from the PCB manufacturer. They had quality problems (the PCB might fail during soldering process) in the production from 5th to 8th calendar week and restarted production in the 9th calendar week That's the reason for the delay.

Well, at least they care about their customers and make sure they deliver a best possible quality.

Loeschzwerg wrote on 30.03.12 at 15:35:15:


That rocks 

You are surprising! 

Excellent work you did.

Best regards,
Oscar.

Thanks all.

With this design the shielding will be far better and this might also improve image quality when using higher resolutions.

I've got six PCBs here, so this should be enough to do a few tests.

What I will do:
1) populate the board with same components as the second design (Rev A1 which Gary does have)
2) populate the board with neraly the same components but change three resistors to get a brighter image if needed
3) use a different type of transistors. this step will be my joker.

Hm... I think 1 week if all goes well and I should be able to send Gary the next dongle, maybe 2 weeks when I don't have enough time to do work or something goes wrong.

Amazing work Loschzwerg !

So the PCB has 'Rampage Dongle' like the original??

Whoa, that's wicked! 

Thanks everyone

Got some time today and soldered all parts within 1 1/4 hours  I'm getting better from day to day.

This is the first working prototype of my "Rev A2 Rampage Dongle", have fun with the pictures:
--> Front of the dongle

--> Back of the dongle



--> finished dongle compared to a bare PCB

I've also done a quick test. The dongle is now able to show a good image when using a resolution of 1024x768 and even 1280x1024 is possible. With the Rev A1 the image was a complete mess! So shielding has improved very much.

Here the pictures:
--> 1024x768

--> 1280x1024

Keep in mind, I inverted the image via Powerstrip to negative so the dongle does what it should do when used with the Rampage card. This "software"-test is not that perfect but the only way I can test the function.

This first Rev A2 dongle uses the exact same parts as the Rev A1 that Gary has now. In later test I will change a few resistors and use different types of transistors.

So far my research for today.

@Gary: You might want to update your Rampage page if you want to