This is my final semester of studying in UTM and of course I need to finish up my final year project in order to graduate. My project is titled “Embedded Ethernet” and I have to gather up all my hardware on my own. I had spent quite some time going to and back from Johor Bahru just to get my hardwares. The ATMEL microcontroller is very rare and needed to order from some suppliers. Luckily the boss of the electronic shop in JB was kindly helpful to help me order it.

So what is my current progress now? The hardware is almost done actually. Spent some hours “researching” on the schematic diagram and then soldering all the components onto the donut board. I think I have done something quite risky because I soldered the whole circuit onto the donut board without doing any test first on a PCB board. Why? Because I don’t have a PCB board and I don’t want to spend more money buying it. Kind of broke already.. haha.. So this is how the whole circuit looks like now.

The software part is the toughest actually. But the TCP/IP stack was already supplied by the website I bought the Packet Whacker from. So I just need to go through with what they developed on it. Unfortunately, since this stupid ATMEL microcontroller is so damn rare, I can’t find a programmer to program it. Damn!~ Never mind, I’ve found the solution from the internet and the components of building it is just less than RM10.

So yesterday my housemates and I went to the electronic components shop in Tmn U to buy those components. They just moved to a new shop today and we happened to be one of the first batch of customers haha~ There were some buffet style meals provided and we were forced to “tapao” those food back to eat it. How funny is that?? In the end, the 3 of us had an early super full dinner (around 4.30pm) at home at the cost of just RM10. Woohoo~! Enough of this.. Time for me to build up that stupid programmer. Anyone have a handrill that can lend me??