We have a home run on our hands!
Hi! Thanks! That's great news!
I just threw one together, did the most craptacular soldering job on it, and it booted right up. The dipswitch diagram is correct (at least with the defaults) and the ROM enable/disable jumper is working. I haven't tested much else.
I didn't order any of the resistors for the LED, assuming that I'd just kipe some from the bins at work. I totally forgot to do that, so my LED is dead for the moment, but I'm sure it'll work when I get it wired in.
If you'd like you can substitute your VOM and it should sense the presence of voltage. Probably I'd just wait to install an LED though.
Everything else seems to be as solid as ever. I love it.
I'll post some pictures of my next build, but I'm going to do that with a real soldering iron at work tomorrow and not this shabby job I just pulled off at home.
Some notes:
1) We may consider shifting the back side silkscreen over and down some; it's almost completely in the upper right hand corner, and looks a little funny. It's also really hard to read with all the holes drilled through the board.
No problem. There is no substitute for real hardware prototypes for finding "look and feel" issues like these.
If it is readable at all, we may consider if this is worth another tooling charge or not. However, I will feel more comfortable after some additional testing to see what other regressions or issues may have crept in.
I suggest a list of all the "go fixes" on the wiki.
2) Three pin jumpers are a PITA. (CSel) I figured I could just cut apart some headers, but they just break apart.
I use a strip of the single row jumpers and an exacto knife or razor blade to "rock" through the cut lines. Just keep your fingers on both sides of the strip since once the blade cuts through the little stinkers go flying. Please just be careful with the cutting!
Also, you can get three pin jumpers which may be worthwhile if you are going to be making a lot of these. You could also just solder a wire instead of the jumper in if you have a particular preference in mind.
3) the way this board is designed, you will have to drill your own holes for the mounting bracket. This is by design, and there's plenty of room to do it, but just remember that you'll have a little bit of work to do after assembling it. I also am in very, very short supply of ISA brackets. The only place I could find them only had 10 in stock, so we can't even fill half of this prototype build, let along the projected 100 cards on the next go. You have to do without or supply your own. (hence having to drill your own holes)
congratulations andrew, on another round of quality work!
Thanks!
Chuck brought up the idea of the Keystone 9202 bracket. I adjusted the PCB so that should fit although the dimensions are right on the edge of not fitting. If it is possible to drill holes without destroying the PCB, we may consider just using the Keystone 9202 blank brackets.
Alternatively, here is a kooky idea... use some of the Keystone brackets for 9200-8 (the 50 pin SCSI cut out) and mount 50 pin IDC dual row headers with eyelets. Then make a custom ribbon cable from the IDE connector to the bracket so builders can mount their CF cards externally. You'd have to either find a 40 pin bracket cutout (not 9200-8) or just mount the CF card to one side.
http://www.keyelco.com/pdfs/M55-prod45.pdf
I don't know how feasible this is but it might work for those who *really* want external access for CF cards.
Thanks and have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch