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Just a little something I cooked up ;) no pictures yet, but here's a
wall of text about it...<br>
<br>
I've got hand drawn schematics made up for an EOMA-68... er... I'm
calling it a Carrier Board for now (the PCB that the CPU card goes
into). This one uses only through-hole components, and all but two
(the PCMCIA slot and, oddly enough, the Ethernet jack) are very
cheap. The idea is that someone like me who is rather a bit of a
dunce with the soldering iron can still put it together in a
dedicated weekend, if so inclined. <b>That is, a person with fairly
beginner-level hobby skills can buy a fistful of parts and a CPU
Card, etch a PCB (or get one from somewhere) and after a few hours
of lead fume inhalation, has a complete computer in their hands.</b>
That's a huge gift, I think, to the Maker community, not to mention
the technically-inclined poor folk out there (I *know* I'm not the
only one!)... seriously, it sounds like good stuff to me.<br>
<br>
My two rules for designing were (1) no surface mount anything at all
period end-of-story, and (2) use as many very standard parts as
possible. Every component can be had at Mouser Electronics in single
unit quantities.<br>
<br>
The Ethernet jack has the magnetics built in, so it's
(unfortunately) the most expensive part on the board -- but I
couldn't find a through-hole Ethernet transformer... I've probably
also omitted some necessary things out of simple ignorance (I have a
hunch that there's more to the USB connection than four wires, a
power supply and data feed, and the connector itself, for instance).
I'm more budding hobbyist with this stuff than anything else -- but
hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? ;)<br>
<br>
The only thing I don't like is that it still requires a custom PCB
unless one wants to do some very creative dongle-making... probably
doable but it'll be very ugly in a number of ways. That said, I'll
be quite surprised if this design cannot get away with using a
single-sided PCB -- meaning any shmuck who can get to eBay can order
the supplies to make the board at home if they want to. (Sounds a
little like me!)<br>
<br>
If anyone wants to try reading my horrible chicken scratch I'll send
out a link to a scanned copy, otherwise I'll try and work up the
motivation to move it into my graphics software (CorelDRAW X3),
since, although I have a copy of Kicad, I never really bothered to
learn how to use it properly...<br>
<br>
Any interest at all?<br>
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