PIC Flasher Kit for Droid #2 Rear Logics

I've come to the conclusion that without running power from the main batteries to the dome, the JEDI rear logics that I have in droid #2 won't be able to run on the meager six D-cell batteries that I have powering all the dome electronics. As beautiful as they are, the rear logics, power distribution board and controller board for these draw about 1 amp, which is asking too much of the D-cells. Thus, I will be replacing the rear logics with the same setup I have in droid #1, namely the PIC flasher kit that powers 16 LEDs and uses a transparency with the 108-LED pattern to cheat the full effect.

I purchased a spare kit, just because.



One of the first things I noticed is that the PIC chip has 18 pins (9 on each side), and the SIL sockets only have 16 pins. Not awesome.



Luckily I happened to have a couple of spare 18-pin DIP sockets, so I sawed one in half and cut the lugs connecting the two sides, so I was able to proceed.



The socket holding the PIC chip needs to be cut in half because a couple of capacitors and the 20MHz oscillator live underneath it.



Before long, I had the whole thing soldered up.



This is going to get put together in slow motion since I have a few other things going on, but it'll get done eventually.