lordbubsy wrote:
I should rephrase that statement, I meant I would really love to design and build a SBC like those.
If doing it myself isn’t going to happen, I definitely would like to make use of that offer. For now that feels a little bit like cheating. And I won’t like to lose the drive designing it myself.
It isn't cheating. Sometimes you just need to have a working example in hand to get your thoughts marshaled on what you want to do. Everything that we build is modeled in some way on prior art. My large scale model locomotive came about because I had access to the full-sized version and hence had detailed knowledge about what goes on inside it.
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For designing a ‘816 based SBC my greatest challenge is routing a board of that size. I probably will make use of the ExpressPCB’s board manufacturing service. I have relatively good confidence in designing the glue logic with a CPLD.
It's actually not that difficult to lay out a PCB. There are some basic "rules" that can be followed that generally make layout relatively painless. As I noted elsewhere, there's a sort of
feng shui to it that become apparent with experience. Again, studying something that has been made and works will give you the needed clues.
Although I have a lot of experience with PCB layout, stretching back some 25 years, I had never laid out a computer PCB prior to designing POC V1.0. Having looked at plenty of them over the years, I wasn't totally at sea on how to proceed. You can do the same. All you need is some confidence and a modicum of understanding and common sense—not to mention plenty of advice from 6502.org members like me who think they know-it-all.
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do I *need* a special tool to swap those PLCC44 IC's?
See attached picture. It's a device called
PLCC chip extractor that is available through many electronics parts sources. The one I linked is the one I have—I purchased it in 1990 and it's still going strong.
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File comment: PLCC Chip Extractor
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