Good news, folks. The latest Dom prototype has been built. I built it over the past two very busy days and did electrical connection testing (and correcting my ****ups) today. I am still seeing some connection between pads not wired together, but I think that the ganged overcurrent pins in the TI chip are causing that.
The next step is to load a bootloader and program this puppy. I have never put a bootloader on before, so that will be a small challenge. Additionally, I forgot to put FTDI on this board, so it is going to be an uphill battle with a tangle of wires. The first program will probably just be a barely modified hasu's code just to see if the damn thing works. Then a second test with code for the calculator will have to be written. I plan on shipping things before the code is finalized. This is due to my poor programming skill. If others are just getting theirs assembled when the firmware is being finalized, there will be more opportunities to test.
I'm a bit frustrated, because this project is taking longer than I would like. I'm one of those people who is in danger of running out of steam on this kind of thing, so if I start slacking be sure to put me in my place. I have yet another consulting gig coming up next week (which is actually pretty ****ing awesome) in addition to field work and my regular experiments, so this is going to drag on some more. I also worry that the longer this takes, the less salient it becomes. I know people will start to get distracted and bored if I take too long getting this out. I'm working on it folks. Please don't get discouraged, I don't intend to forget about you.
NINJA EDIT: the soldering looks like **** on the prototype board because it is a prototype that has been soldered and resoldered multiple times. Real versions won't be nearly as ugly.