Dead PIC 18F2550

[Tom-Cat]

Hi all.

My board with PIC 18F2500 just died for no apparent reason - it was plugged into the PS3 via a 4-port HUB for 5 days or so and working perfectly well. Today I just turned the PS3 on with the main switch and the board was not working anymore. It seems the PIC is dead, but I am not 100% sure since I don't have the programmer here... I replaced all the components. I attached a picture of the two boards I made.

Do you think it might of been the components that caused it ? Should I use some other type of capacitors ? I am baffled...
I also tried to install the switch on it after that, since I had the bootloader + firmware on it, to see if it would get recognised as Microchip device on the PC, but nothing gets detected on the PC, not even as the 6 port HUB anymore.

Any ideas what could go wrong ? What I should do to prevent it happening again ?

Best regards and thanks for any replies

TC

[Tom-Cat]

Just a quick reply to myself. It was the first 30 bytes of the bootloader code that got corrupted on the PIC... no idea why. Reprogrammed it back with the same hex and it works again. Anyone knows why this would happen and how to prevent it ?

[Sylpher]

:S Hmm...so the bootloader just corrupted somehow, just by staying connected to the PS3? From what you've said the only thing which you appear to be doing differently to a lot of users would be connecting it to a 4-port USB hub so maybe that would've had some influence...? (Try connecting it directly the PS3's usb hub for a while and see if that makes a difference).
Also when building the board, did you make any modifications of your own or did you follow a pre-designed board layout? I don't have much experience with building boards or anything but I figured that using different components to that advised, may have had some impact. Anyways these are the only things I can think of, but it's good to hear that you've found a solution.

[Tom-Cat]

Yes, it was connected to the PS3 via a 4-port HUB for 5 days. I didn't even touch the board, so there could not have been any contacts made on the board itself).
Now I have it connected directly to the PS3 and will see what happens.

I built the board precisely as it is drawn on this post on this forum :

http://psx-scene.com/forums/showpost...69&postcount=1 (PSGroove finally ported to a new chipset: PIC18F2550)

I programmed both the bootloader and the 20Mhz hex ... worked really well - everytime. The components were all as designed. Never actually used the in-circuit programming since I didn't need to, so I don't know if that actually works (need to install a switch between pins 17 and 19)...