I realized a few weeks ago that I had 3 MAX11040K chips lying around that I "needed" to use. They were packed in a vacuum sealed bag, and were supposed to be used by October 2014, a few months ago. I'm not sure why, but they're "moisture sensitive" and require baking out if they've been left in air at all. I really don't want to bake them out, so hopefully it will be okay.

In a first effort, I spent an evening drawing up a quick breakout board in Eagle. I was surprised at just how incapable the autorouter in Eagle was (or at least how poorly I used it?) since the circuit was maximally simple. I ended up hand drawing all of the traces, which wasn't ideal. It got late, and before I had really thought about it, I submitted it to dirtypcbs.com to get printed. I have hand-etched a few boards in the past, but I was worried that the fine pitch of the TSSOP38 (0.5mm) would exceed my sloppy manufacturing capabilities, so I figured paying $14 wouldn't be so bad.

The board is just a breakout, and is completely non-ideal for a lot of things (such as noise...). I just want to be able to talk to a chip, and plan out a circuit around it, then we can move forward with a more complicated and thought-out design.