Dear Dan,
I am in about the same position as you are... I did find a short under the GPS Module where the jumper for the VDD power was touching the
GPS antenna jack. I have been inspecting my board for shorts and opens but so far... Have not cleared the faults. If you can get it to load
the software .... You can use Putty to look and the hardware diagnostics. That will give you what the software sees. Mine says the 5V power supply is high and the 3.3V power supply is about 2.9V on the linear power supply. I can't seem to go any farther than that. I have changed the power supply boards twice. Not finding any bad solder joints and no other shorts. My board has an intermittent short on the VDD bus somewhere... But can't find it and all solder connections look good. Running 8Vdc on input voltage board draws about 200ma when turned on and nothing until I hold the power on button (Long press). Right now I don't know exactly what else to do. My 3.3V power board gets warm to the touch but so far no fire.
My front panel display has never lit up but I see the top row of digits are squares and nothing on the bottom row. Voltage to the readout but nothing but squares on it. Contrast doesn't seem to do anything but make them disappear. Woe is me. I may give up on this one and try again. My problem may be a board short.
Take care and have fun.
73 Dave WA5DJJ
