eddiea6987:
all seems well except it works a little bit slower then it did on the bread board , So i am guessing it has to do with how i connected my crystal or the capacitors to the crystal
if you noticed on the image the capacitors that come off the crystal are suppose to go to ground so i just have one long connection conecting both of them to some extra ground headers and all of those as well as the grounds on the Atmega chip are basically all routed the same way to the actual ground off of the 7805 ... So i uploaded the Blink led sketch and it does not blink once a second i would say about once ever 2 seconds ,
Where did you get the chip from? Is it brand new? Or did you took it from an Arduino board? Does it work on the Arduino board? Try the serial program in an Arduino board and report what you see.
The tracks don't look so big... plus, if you've connected this on a breadboard, the capacitance would probably be higher than here. :\
eddiea6987:
another thing, any tips on how to solder components with out having to tape them on, because for example the female headers where a pain in the butt because i cannot bend the leads outwards to hold it in place so i tried taping them on and was difficult to get them nice and straight once i flipped it upside down to solder...
Experience is key with these things... when assembling a board, start with the lowest components and work your way upwards. The sockets are normally the first ones to be soldered. You put the socket in it's place, flip the board, set it on a table, put some pressure to make sure the socket and board are lined up, solder one pin one each side this way. The socket will now remain in place and you can solder at will.
It is also a good idea to buy sockets from the same manufacturer to avoid having the board slightly crooked. However, this is splitting airs.
But again, in the end it comes down to practice and I'm sure plenty of people have their own tricks when it comes to solder.