[sdiy] My 4069 attempt not working

[Nicolai Czempin]

Well, I got the 2.2nF Capacitor, and as some of you have guessed, it 
didn't make any difference to the fact that it's not working :-(

It's kinda hard to debug when one doesn't know what to expect at 
different points in the circuit.
I tried to take some pictures with my cheap-o-the-line digicam, but the 
quality is so low that it's not really possible to see anything (I can 
basically choose between overexposed, underexposed and blurry, even at 
the highest resolution with the highest quality level).

I tried to leave parts out to simplify the whole affair---only ones 
where I'd guess it wouldn't be a significant difference: All the stuff 
that's there for thermal stability is not much use when it's not 
oscillating at all!
So I eliminated the thermistors for now, and I haven't yet glued the 
transistors together.
As mentioned before, I am only using the "top half" of the 4069 IC 
(except for pin 7, which is connected to GND).
I don't have the power supply yet, so I'm using two 9V battery blocks, 
with GND "in the middle".
I have also eliminated the second input voltage, that should just have 
the same effect as having 0 V at the second input, shouldn't it? Or do I 
need to connect it to GND through the 100k resistor?
The V1 I'm simply connecting to +V, as I don't have any alternatives 
right now. But that should work too, shouldn't it? There should be 
*some* oscillation.
I did make sure that +V, -V and GND really are that, I do that every 
time. But I'm not sure what should happen in the different parts of the 
current source, and it's hard to debug that way.
In my childish naivety, I also tried to just leave out the current 
source and connect the integrator input directly to +V. Still no 
oscillation.
I'm pretty sure that I've made the correct connections (no diodes the 
wrong way round or anything like that). I can still post a picture if 
that would help anyone, but as I said they are all very low quality.

Can someone help please? "Just" a walkthrough as to what I should see on 
the scope at certain key points would be very helpful.

Sigh. I really would like to get this to work, otherwise I'll have to 
get back to crummy 741 stuff.