Lol is that Scotty?
Ok guilty as charged on getting my wording wrong. I sometimes say one thing and mean another. I mean in some cases I do want a robust board.. this is automotive after all but when I talk about the electrical issues I'm having, I guess I'm going for higher fidelity which as you pointed out tends to be less robust. So be it. And I guess I don't really care about the digital logic per se. I'm more focused on accurate timing and having predictable voltage levels for my analog inputs, since most of my projects involve analog signals.
For my car application, I'm reading RPM, Knock, Manifold Pressure, Throttle Position and Air-Fuel Ratio, which all rely on a voltage between 0 and 5. However I find myself having to recalibrate everything because the numbers the Arduino is reporting don't jive with my dedicated automotive diagnostic hardware, probably because of voltage drift or depression or whatever the right term is for it. I took great care to control noise on the input lines by using Tefzel wire, which also handles the environmental hazards as well. So I'm pretty happy with the wiring job I've done. I also made sure to have the chassis of the car act as a common ground for everything so I didn't have floating voltages or anything contaminating my signals. Despite the signals being fairly clean, I can't seem to get stable readings from my code and I think it's because of the reference voltages in the board moving around. If the interrupts trigger on certain voltage threholds that are supposed to have a built-in tolerance (anything from 4-5V being high for example) but the highest voltage I can read is 4.2, it's no wonder I'm triggering my interrupts with noise ripples on my signal.
Well, it's not the end of the world. I can always achieve what I need with discrete circuitry. I was just asking about upgraded boards so as to reduce the chance of error on my part, integrating everything.