The author feels it worthwhile at this point to indulge in a little expert advice aimed at the builder_to_be. First, never start to build a bare board up before you have carefully inspected it for quality. INe advise placing the board between you and a concentrated light source ( i.e. a desk lamp ). This will graphically highlight the traces on the side of the pcb board closest to you. After inspecting the front side, be sure to flip the board over and inspect the reverse side. You are looking for irregularities in the trace structure, Fine lines bridging traces, blotches of unremoved copper,and breaks in the traces will all be visible. Take our word for it, 15 minutes of relaxed inspection now could save you hours of frustrating troubleshooting later.

If you find a flaw, You have two options. One, return the board to the supplier. We know of no reputable firm which will not replace a virgin printed circuit board with a noticeable flaw. The second option is a judgment call, if you find an isolated problem that's fairly straight forward, a real technician would simply correct the flaw and proceed, confident that he knows what he's doing and accepts the outcome. We know of few PCB retailers that would replace a board that reflects the sustained frustration of a stymied hobbyist, and we know of fewer still frustrated hobbyist's that can tell the retailer where "the problem on the board" is located. If he could the retailer would happily repair it for him. So check the board carefully.

Next on our list of indulgent pre-amblings is to - express our professional opinion that its not worth it to try and save a couple of bucks by using cheat parts or parts that don't fit. We guaranty that the satisfaction of saving a few dollars will quickly pale in the face of a few hours of aggravation. Do yourself a favor and bay good sockets and capacitors that fit. As a very wise man once said When You think that you are going to make a mistake.... don't.'

Enough of our sated advice. Basically the card is very straight forward to build. Care should be taken to make good solder joints with the solder flowing though to the top side of the board. Remember that this board contains not just digital circuitry but it also contains analog circuitry, so solder jobs which will pass with the digital stuff might give you noise and static on the analog circuitry. The only special components on the board are the ADC and the DAC and the metal oxide resistors at locations R16,17 and R24,25. Be sure to use mono-lythic capacitors for all values except the 100pf. Some hobbyist like to use ceramic capacitors because they have some in their parts box but these type of capacitors are not suitable for either bypass of the digital circuitry or to pass the analog signal from one stage to another.

To test the card we advise you to first use an ohm meter and measure resistance between Gnd and all the other voltage rails. Of course you should read an infinite resistance after the initial, brief charge up of the bypass capacitors.

So you wish to test the card, we suggest that you first hook it up and pretend that its a fully functioning wired and tested card straight from the factory. Since you have tested for shorts on the power lines there is very little that the card could do to affect the computer as far as damaging it, so don't be afraid.