Newbie question

[keithdoxey]

I don't think that I will ever need the pins in the future on this application

Hands up all those who have said similar in the past

[mister_e]

Hehe, well there's still a slight difference between Thinking and Saying.

I'm not going to use those pins in future

OR

I don't think i'll use them

Maybe this is why i use 0 ohms resistor even if i hate to do some PCB upgrade or modification.. ARGH! waste of time for me... but sometimes when there's a few hundred, thousand, million PCBs on the market and your customer(s), as much (see all) of them, need a cheap solution, you have no more choice. Do and sold a ModKit is still another idea when you can trust the one who'll do the modif for you.

BTW, now i mostely sold the whole design (PCB drawings, Schematic, HEX files) and the customer have to do everything on it's own when the prototype i send to them is aproved. Problem less for me.

[Archilochus]

I was just thinking... I'd get sort of nervous connecting a pin that could possibly become an output directly to one of the power supply rails. If I felt that I needed to connect the pin to something, I'd most likely do what Steve suggested, but in place of a 0 Ohm resistor maybe a ~470 Ohm or so?

Or is that silly?

Arch

[mister_e]

you're always suppose to know exactly what pin do what. You're the only one who can modify a pin to output (in theory) Sure you can use any kind of resistor bellow 10K. If your design use some Network Resistor and you have some spare in, why not using them?

Few extra i/o are still usefull anyways, just think what else you can do with. Calibration/Maintenance button, status output for XYZ stuff, list is long enough.

Out of curiosity, how many spare i/o do you have?