Hide your daughters, my transceiver is "done". I got the external connections all wired up temporarily, threw caution to the wind and fired it up.
The first test was not very successful. I had a dummy load so I didn't expect to hear much, but I thought there'd be some beeping or something to let me know it was on. Nothing. I plugged in my paddles to see if I could hear the sidetone, nothing. Hmm. Upon closer inspection I hadn't installed any of the ICs or the crystals. D'oh.
Second test, with ICs and crystals installed, it powered up with a "73", followed by a horrible constant tone. A check of the connections and the paddles weren't plugged in all the way, so it thought I had a straight key installed and it was just key down. Thank God for the dummy load.
Third test with the headphones plugged all the way in and the paddles plugged all the way in and I was making dits and dahs. Backwards, but I was making them. There's a setting in the PIC that controls everything for that, so I fixed that, adjusted the keyer speed, and everything seemed happy.
Fourth test was to connect it to my main antenna. I carefully carried it into the shack, connected it up, and I could hear signals. There's an offset of about 500 Hz so you get two frequencies per crystal set. I turned on the main rig to see if it could hear anything without the antenna connected and it did. So those 500mW are blasting all the way across the yard 30' away and it could hear it without an antenna. Bazinga.
If you look closely you'll see on the waterfall where I was sending dits. For those of you who've been following my CW story, I'm using the homebrew sawblade and drill bit paddles with my left hand. And if you look even closer you'll see the tweezers I used on the headphone jack to jumper the headphone connections and get audio in both ears.
The next step is to figure out the connector layout on the non-Altoids Altoids tin and get it all mounted up. First I'll probably see if any reverse beacons can hear me so I know it's actually working.