Audrey Lives!

Easter truly is a remarkable time of year: I thought my lovely Audrey Internet Appliance (link) had died a death in smoke on returning from the US; I had even tried to get it working three times; but now it appears it has come back to life! Audrey, which ran off 110V US-style, got fried when I tried to run it off a cheapo step-down voltage transformer (which admittedly did warn against using with electronic devices). Early this week I found an industrial step-down transformer and tried to run it off that…to no avail. There wasn’t even any power from the plug-top transformer; so I popped off its casing, and then that for the whole machine, looking for fried components, but there was no sign of any burn marks (just lots of oily fingerprints on the metal motherboard cover). So there was still some hope. Desolder gun in hand, I rewired the power-supply lead and hooked up a handy Thandar-Thirlby (programmable) constant current source. Audrey’s lead has eight pins: 2 @ 5V; 3 @ 3.3V. So, with current limits set, I fired-up the T-T and…nothing. I was just about to give up when I flicked the two channel switches and brrrrr the Audrey buzzed into life. Within seconds it was again giggling away (see flash intro here soon). When it gets back online, I’ll post some more details and links.

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