[Arm-netbook] Schematic and PCB layout CAD files

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday 20. May 2019 04.22.41 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Sun, May 19, 2019 at 10:09 PM Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > On the topic of KiCad and designs related to the EOMA68-A20 cards, it is
> > worth noting that the Olimex A64-OLinuXino board schematic and layout is
> > available in KiCad format:
> > 
> > https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/A64-OLinuXino/A64
> > -OLinuXino_Rev_D
>  this is the project i was referring to that was a nightmare to
> develop.  there's a FOSDEM talk about it.

I'd have to review what has been said about it: there are usually indications 
of problems in the Olimex blog articles, either in the articles themselves or 
in the comments. Right now, I only recall problems with the A64 kernel 
support, as usual, and nothing much about developing the hardware.

Various Olimex talks have covered KiCad, but my impression was that they were 
largely happy about it. This doesn't mean that these projects are necessarily 
collaborative or have people actually looking at the designs. I didn't find 
any discussion in their forums about such things.

One of my motivations for looking closer was to see whether people can 
actually open these files and do things with them. As far as I can tell, these 
files seem to be usable, although one would have to go through the entire 
process to find out whether they genuinely reproduce the same board, of 
course.

Anyway, here are some articles I found about this board and KiCad:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first-open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/a64-olinuxino-update-2/

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/a64-olinuxino-update-schematic-almost-done-now-component-placement-on-the-pcb-is-on-the-way/

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/a64-olinuxino-oshw-linux-computer-is-close-to-complete-routing-github-update-of-kicad-files/

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/a64-olinuxino-routing-completed-but-we-still-have-to-final-touch-this-and-that/

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/a64-olinuxino-64-bit-arm-oshw-designed-completely-with-kicad-is-live/

There isn't really much detail in these articles, but I suppose it gives an 
impression of the timeline.

>  btw, just so that people are aware: tsvetan has consistently lied to
> a *lot* of people and caused huge problems for the EOMA project.

Sure, but I thought that I should at least mention that Olimex have made the 
component/footprint libraries and designs available for KiCad. This might give 
anyone interested a head start on doing something similar, or at least provide 
an indication of how much work is involved.

Maybe the design/libraries effectively use modified versions of the standard 
components/footprints and that it wouldn't be much effort to replicate that 
work independently. But this would only make designs with other SoCs like the 
A20 more feasible and give more confidence to people that it can be done.

Paul

P.S. Note that I wouldn't necessarily recommend the A64 as the basis of a 
product given the apparently ongoing software problems:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/a64-olinuxinogot-mainline-linux-kernel-5-0-images/

Also, this board is distinct from the Olimex A64-based laptop and SOM board, 
with the latter being completely proprietary, as I understand it.