I’m trying to simplify some plugs a bit. The UART plug has a 3.6864 MHz crystal and two 18 pF caps:
(yeah, it’s an awkward fit)
Turns out that it works just as well with the 16 MHz + 10 pF combo I’m using in another project – using adjusted baudrate dividers, of course:
(somewhat better fit)
But hey, why stop there. A resonator with built-in caps would get rid of two more components – and it’s more than precise enough to generate accurate baudrates:
(awkward fit again, but who cares since it’s a test)
Cool: the 3.68 MHz resonator works – a 40% reduction in component count! Now I can make a new “release”.
I’m still readjusting my neurons to this hardware world. It sure is different from software – even though bits & bytes could be considered to be infinitely small, this hardware stuff somehow feels tangibly smaller…