68kMLA Classic Interface
This is a version of the 68kMLA forums for viewing on your favorite old mac. Visitors on modern platforms may prefer the main site.
| Click here to select a new forum. | |
| 2.5" SCSI SSD Project | |
| Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2011-03-21 05:36:21 How about laying down a strip of copper or aluminum foil on an oversized pad of (non-conductive?) varnish, letting that dry and then using the conductive pen (or solder a piece of jumper wire you've already got to it for your connection [😉] ]'> ) and then varnishing it again for protection? Digital Decoupage! I'd use lemon gold leaf or variegated gold leaf, but I'm a crazy sign painter who apprenticed BG (before Gerber)/BC (before computers) who minored in Fine Art, about 1/2 of it screen printing (in printmaking classes 1-3) & classic training in most other disciplines. So you never know what kind of $*#% I'll come up with. _____________________________________________ I like the notion of using a small strip of PCB laid down across something like your bus section on the debugged rev of your 3.5" form factor design. It'd be a salable, limited edition run of collectible 3.5" ProtoBoards. To maximize initial prepaid orders, add in the (estimated/amortized) cost of a free 2.5" final production board and maybe a 10% discount on any future 2.5" production board orders by your "investors." Then you'll have the $ to defray your development costs to date and the development capital for the 3.5" limited edition up front. You'll have another "buy in point" for the collectible limited edition version of the 2.5" board for those comrades who'd want to wait for your proof of concept success before sending you $. Give your initial "investors" a big discount (and another free 2.5" final production board based again on the the (estimated/amortized) cost of their orders for the 2.5" collectible limited edition board. For development boards & limited edition revisions you'd: ____ add the daughtercard section(s) to your main design along the most cost effective (short or long) edge. ____ divide it from the main card by a pair of properly spaced trace strips placed as guidelines for scoring/snapping _________ or spaced at the kerf width of a bandsaw or coping saw blade for cutting a more complex shape. _________ I've got the bandsaw to do the cuts and can advise you as to the proper radii for complex shape turns. [😉] ]'> By doing this for both sides of the bus section of your 2.5" initial prototype would give you: ___ 4 or 6 layers of PCB for the bus section (or the entire board) on your 2.5" design ________ at a minimal 2 sided PCB price increase. ___ 2 layers of solder mask dividing the ground plane from the main board signals for insulation. ___ avoid using headers as board interconnects ___ use bits of wire as your physical and electrical interconnect for signal traces AND ground! ___ another spot for placing ICs for the final 4 layer PCB production boards & simplify trace routing . . . whatever, it might work out, my brain just shut down and it's time to get ready for work. :-/ | |
Posted by: trag on 2011-03-21 12:57:42I just sent the board off to have fabbed. setup fees and all, it ran about 72 dollars. OUCH.I should have posted this link earlier: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/services-c-185.html Ten pieces of 5cm X 5cm 2 layer board for $20, or ten pieces of 10cm X 10cm for $40. I didn't realize you were so close to fabrication.... | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-03-21 19:16:11 I dont play around, hehe. NOW you tell me. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE well ill use em for the 2.5" run. Id rather find a cheap 4-layer service, but ill take what i can get. As far as the "investors" thing, i vowed myself NEVER to do that. i like to do things with the money i have. if it dont work out, it dont work out. i dont end up "oweing" people. | |
Posted by: trag on 2011-03-22 14:06:28well ill use em for the 2.5" run. Id rather find a cheap 4-layer service, but ill take what i can get.That's the holy grail. I haven't priced them in a while, but the best I've found has been 4-layer proto services from which you get four boards for about $200. Now, the boards can be large, like up to 8" X 10" or some such, but they don't allow repeats in the proto service, so you can't squeeze multiple boards onto one proto. | |
| Posted by: olePigeon on 2011-03-23 15:14:09 Have you thought about talking to the guys at ReactiveMicro? They make cards for Apple II computers, maybe they have some advice or can help you with the prototyping, fabrication, or technical problems. | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-03-23 18:43:41 its slowly starting to come together. I just got my transceivers from TI, and the digikey parts arrived. | |
| Posted by: insaneboy on 2011-04-03 08:37:01 any updates? | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-03 15:02:04 All the parts are in, still waiting for the board to arrive. Ordered from BatchPCB, and they are slow as dogsnot. STILL processing. Ill never order from them again. I ordered enough CF sockets to build at least 10 of them. | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-06 17:43:53 BatchPCB has shipped the board. So its on its way here. What sucks is in order for me to make changes to my CAD drawings, or etc, i have to do everything ALL over again. Why? my HDD decided it wanted to take a shit. LOL. ironic. hehe. So i lost everything. gotta start over. 😛 good thing i didnt start editing/proofing the code. i still have copies of. | |
| Posted by: Bunsen on 2011-04-06 18:16:23 Backups, people. | |
| Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2011-04-06 19:41:08 The artwork backed up in this thread should be a pretty good start! :approve: The new board's gonna be four layer to get it all to fit the form factor, just be sure to keep one two layer board unpopulated for troubleshooting/testing any last minute changes that may not have been posted! [😉] ]'> edit: Did you run Disk Warrior on that (^*%$#*()? HDD!  BTW, how do you like that PCB Layout Program? Which OS? What CPU? RAM? General config? Monitor(s)? Input device? etc? :?: | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-07 19:57:51 I am using my main machine. which is an intel core i7 that dual-booted between win7 and hackintosh My HDD was fully encrypted with truecrypt, because i have/had other sensitive information on it, well DID anyway. I have multiple people that live with me under the same roof, and they dont keep their "prying eyes" out of other peoples personal lives/information. Plus i used to exploit hardware/software flaws in smartcards. AT89SC, 8051, ST7, ST19, etc... but all that crap is now gone, never kept backups for "obvious" reasons. and i retired from messing with that stuff long ago. it was a fun hobby, but i lost interest. I went to grab the recovery disk that contained the backup of the master keyset, and hash keys, etc... and it had a nice scratch on the data layer. my CDs lay around loosely which is a really bad bad bad habit of mine. somehow a virus snuck into the bootsector which overwrote the master keys. first time that has EVER happened to me. | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-07 20:04:01 Software wise, i used freePCB. took awhile to get used to, but its pretty much a slim/cut down version of eagle, and its open-source freeware. still uses all the same concepts, you have to create nets. then it generates ratlines that you can route. the nets can be put in by hand which is tedious, OR if you have a schematic, the netlist is generated from it. this way you cant make a mistake or forget things. unfortunately i have no "digital" copy of the schematic in any form that freePCB can understand to autocreate nets. P.S. on a lighter note, i dont have a schematic AT ALL now. lol. gotta redo that. Actually, i may just do it in a format that freePCB can import, itll make board routing go much faster. | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-08 18:34:33 Boards arrived. They sent me 2, i only ordered 1. But hey, i am not complaining. And boy, do they look beutiful. lol. Ill have to take a picture when i get a chance. Its just too bad i have to redo the CAD again. friggen A. PITA. | |
| Posted by: MacJunky on 2011-04-08 18:44:53 Do we get boardpix? :-D | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-09 14:05:55 pictures of the board.   | |
| Posted by: JRL on 2011-04-09 18:23:59 Very nice! You are an amazing person for taking up this task. Sorry to hear about the lost CAD drawing though. 🙁 | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2011-04-09 19:28:51 Ya, i got to redo it now. But regardless, i have to re-do it anyway because i want to try to scale the board back down to 2.5" again. Once this project is done and over with, i am going to make a replacement modem for the PB1XX series to replace the internal modem with an xBee wireless COMM module. and write some realbasic software to send AT commands to the xBee to configure it for the various network topologies and keys. so basically you can use it as a wireless "localtalk" setup. | |
| Posted by: LCGuy on 2011-04-10 01:35:41 That is just beautiful. 🙂 | |
| Posted by: Byrd on 2011-04-10 05:29:06 Oh man - that looks great, can't wait to see the PCB populated with chips and working! We're lucky to have you around here, not many projects go through 🙂 JB | |
| < 5 > |