Uglyface Problem and IC Socket Q [UPDATE: FIXED]

[robotboy]

Hey guys. I slaved over my uglyface for about five hours last night slowly putting it together piece by piece. At about 2:30 AM, slightly dilirious, I hooked it up to my protobox to test it out. Unfortunately, I got no sound out of it. My protobox worked when bypass was engaged as usual but the ugliness just wasn't forthcoming. I decided to call it a night, and when I went to unplug the battery, I noticed it was getting warm. This probably means I have a direct short, right?

I sat down over lunch today with the schematic, board, and a highlighter and traced every connection and orientation on polarized components. Everything looked ok, but I took a safety pin and scraped between close connections to insure I didn't have any bridges. I also took some isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush and thoroughly cleaned the board to remove flux burns and debris from the scraping. I'll probably test with my multimeters continuity tester when I get home, but I'm wondering if the direct short that's lurking somewhere could have potentially fried the CMOS 7555, LM386-N or vactrol? Hopefully not. I'm pretty sure I got my IC's oriented properly, but if I got them backward, would that fry them as well?

Last but not least, I read something in an old thread on the forum today about having a dip-8 socket oriented wrong. I never even considered orientation on sockets, but I looked it up on the ratshack site, and it said pin-1 is polarized... I checked my IC sockets, and it appears that I got lucky and put them both in the right way (I think...). Anyway, do sockets just flat out not work if they're oriented wrong? Sorry for the long post. I just can't wait to get this thing working. Also, has anybody hooked an expression pedal up to their uglyface yet? I have a volume pedal I'm considering sacrificing if I can ever get this thing working.

[RDV]

Make sure both ICs are grounded where they're supposed to be.

RDV

[idiot savant]

listen to RDV, i just had the same problem with my uglyface build, and he was right on... make sure everything is grounded correctly, and make sure you have the jumpers on the IC's right

[robotboy]

OK, I traced the hell out of this thing with the continuity tester, and everything seems right. One thing that is confusing me very much is that on the following layout, the little red dots on the IC's are supposed to represent pin 1; however, both my pin 1 indicators on my ICs are on the pin above the red dot (still vertically aligned though).. In plain english, the pin 1 dot points towards the grounding strip on the left hand side but connects to the top pin instead of the bottom. It seems imposible to make the dot on my ICs line up with the dots in the layout. Anyway, at this point, I have no idea how to tell whether any of the ICs or vactrol are fried. My brother-in-law is an EE, so I might have him look at it on Saturday, but it'd be nice to get it fixed by myself. Here's the layout I'm following. Any help would be appreciated.

BTW, I left out the .001 caps, but I doubt that has anything to do with the problem.

[Dan N]

The mark on the IC only has to tell you which end is the top. When you know the top, count counter clockwise starting from top left.

The timer is cmos. It does not like static electricity or wrong power polarity. I have killed more 7555's than any other part I have used in this DIY hobby. Do you have extras to try in the socket?

Hang in there!

[robotboy]

Still slogging along here. Anyway, here are my pin voltages, which probably don't make any sense if there might be a short somewhere... I just bought some new 386 and 7555 chips I'm going to try next.

Measured with my multimeter ranged at 20V.

LM386
1 - .46
2 - 0
3 - .07
4 - 0
5 - .67
6 - .1.4
7 - .55
8 - .48

7555
1 - 0
2 - .53
3 - .45
4 - .48
5 - .49
6 - .54
7 - .49
8 - 1.41

[Tim Escobedo]

Pin 8 of the 7555 should be at about full supply voltage, as should pin 6 of the 386.

I know it's frustrating, but there's clearly some wrong wiring here.

[robotboy]

Tried all new chips except the vactrol (which is soldered in)... no dice  

[Tim Escobedo]

If you can pull the chips and measure those pin sockets. They should me at full supply voltage. If not, your power supply/power supply wiring is not up to snuff.

[robotboy]

If you can pull the chips and measure those pin sockets. They should me at full supply voltage. If not, your power supply/power supply wiring is not up to snuff.

Thanks for helping me Tim! I really like all your circuits. So, every pin of the IC socket should be at max voltage, or just the ones that aren't connected to ground? Anyway, I'll try it.

[Tim Escobedo]

Not every pin. Pin 8 of the 7555 and pin 6 of the 386 should be at full supply voltage, since they should be connected to the + of the power supply.

I'm not sure what the other pins would measure, since I almost never measure voltages in my circuits.

[jmusser]

Hey Tim, it seems like I have waited a fairly long "week" for the "Octup Blender" mod! :wink:

[robotboy]

Not every pin. Pin 8 of the 7555 and pin 6 of the 386 should be at full supply voltage, since they should be connected to the + of the power supply.

I'm not sure what the other pins would measure, since I almost never measure voltages in my circuits.

Those pins have full voltage when no IC is connected. The weird thing is that "full voltage" in this case is 9.8V off a standard 9V battery.

[robotboy]

Well, I feel like a moron. I found out that the problem is that I built my uglyface interpreting the schematic as if it was representing the bottom of the perfboard instead of the top. I've been building everything this way thus far, and it's all worked, but that's because all my builds have been simple 3 pin trasistor based circuits. My EE brother-in-law alerted me to the error of my ways after looking at my built for about 2 minutes. So, we rebuilt it last night, and now I have a working uglyface and another fundamental under my belt  :wink: . Thanks to everybody who helped me with this. I'll be posting a sound clip and a pic of my UF once it's boxed.