The Ethernet shield is a go!

I kept thinking for a while of buying an Ethernet shield from Lady Ada: it would have been $40 in all ($15 for the shield and $25 for the WIZnet Ethernet module). However, the Wiznet module was back ordered for a while so when I accidentally ran into a similar Ethernet shield on NKC electronics, I didn't hesitate. The decision was easy because this shield comes with the WIZ812MJ module and while normally the shield is $32.99 then it was on sale for $29.99.

It arrived in a couple of days and it looked great. And now I had to solder it. Like I keep saying, I am a beginner so I had no idea how to do it. Of course I tried soldering before but I was never happy with the results. I looked for tutorials and found a couple great ones, like the soldering basics tutorial on Sparkfun and the one from Lady Ada. Armed with all this knowledge I got some courage and took my Weller SP23LK Marksman 25 Watt Soldering Iron Kit that I got at amazon.com for about $15 out of its plastic (first time using it!) and started to solder following the guide. And it turned out pretty good, if I may say so.

I gave it a quick try using a piece of software Xtalker posted in the Arduino forum and it works great -- thanks a lot, Xtalker for starting me on this project.

Next step: make a real project out of it!