SparkFun Forums

[monstrum]

I missed spotting an error before sending my boards out to fab. Both VREF terminals got tied to +3.3V. First chip I tried induced a short from +3.3V to ground. I thought it just had got killed as I had to heat up the board three times to replace a voltage regulator. That or perhaps ESD. The second chip I tried got extremely hot which led me to start reviewing the schematics.

Would it be safe to cut the VREF traces and leave them floating (ADC not used) or will have to cut the VREF-negative and patch it to ground for the chip to operate correctly?

[Crappinni]

From page 575 of the manual:

Note: VREFP should be tied to VDD(3V3) and VREFN should be tied to VSS if
the ADC and DAC are not used.

But you could always give it a shot if there's nothing to lose.