You know, I thought that I had checked everything.

Really, I did. But, you know, the schematic was 140 pages long. That’s a lot of pages. My eyes were tired, and the pages started to look a little blurry. After all, it was 2 a.m. I had to finish schematic capture before the weekend. Darn project manager wanted to start layout first thing Monday morning. Customers were lining up and we needed to ship.

How was I supposed to catch it? I mean, I thought pin 226 on that FPGA was the TDI pin. At least, that’s what the datasheet said. Or what I thought the datasheet said. Turns out it was pin 229. Damn datasheets are written in 8-point font anyway. Could happen to anybody. Really.

So they said we can’t test the board. At least not with boundary scan. So the project manager says we need to buy a flying probe or something. I don’t know much about ‘em. Don’t even know what a flying probe is. But I hear they’re expensive. One of the guys says it’s a couple of hundred grand. Gosh, I hope not. My boss said I could pay for it. He was joking, of course…