Processor board

After I cycled against and with the wind to Radioshack (the closest, but not the cheapest supplier of PCB in my area) I was able to start soldering together the board shown. It is the typical board I make, with a 6 pin ICSP for connecting the Pickit 2, a 8-12V power supply input using a 2.1mm jack (standard) and a 20 MHz resonator (not very accurate, but accuracy seems not very important in a LED cube. The speed is useful for making special effects, which I'll probably never write). As said I'm using the 16F57, mostly because I had one around and it has two full ports (PORTB and PORTC) that can be used to control the cube. PORTB will have to share bits with the ICSP, but that shouldn't be a problem. After soldering the board I tested it, and it didn't immediately work, but that was because I didn't realise the PIC16F57 is actually not a 16-series PIC, but a base model PIC. After switching the programming software to recognize base PIC, it all worked fine. My voltage meter is running out of power, so it was giving the clearly wrong voltage of 6.3V from USB and the 7805. I'll have to buy a new battery for it.