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Circuit Board Favor

antiquekid3

antiquekid3

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2009
Messages
594
Location
Alabama
I have a pretty big favor to ask. I drew out in Eagle a 32K RAM card schematic as per Michael Holley's website, but the trial version is quite limited. Not only do I not have $150 to spend now, I also plan on getting the software for Christmas. If I were to share the schematic, could someone layout the board for me? I would ask it be the same dimensions as the original SS-50 boards and be single-sided.

I already got the $5 worth of parts from Digi-Key. I would like to make this board look as professional as possible, and that calls for a PCB! I have made my own boards, and it's kind of fun, too!

Thanks!

Kyle
 
Hi! May I suggest using KiCAD and FreeRouting.net as an open source alternative to Eagle and you can make your own PCB fairly easily. I've done it several times for the N8VEM project PCBs.

Eagle is a fine program but is a commercial product. IMO, the truly useful versions are at least capable of Eurocard sized PCBs are rather expensive.

An alternative would be gEDA but I can't really speak to how well it works.

Good luck with your project! Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

PS, if this is a "one off" project you might consider using a prototyping board and wire wrap or point to point construction. Making a PCB is really useful if there is going to be some sort of production run.
 
Thanks Andrew!

Now that I got to looking at the price for the FULL version of Eagle ($1500!!), I think KiCAD is a much better alternative! Unfortunately, I don't have a PC currently (I'm a Mac user). Maybe I'll ask for WinXP for Christmas and then get the free KiCAD myself. That way I can double-boot and be able to run KiCAD! Not to mention countless other programs and emulators!

I'd be more than happy to design a PC board if someone else wanted to use it. I found out that in my SWTPC, I now have two 8K RAM cards with something wrong...so I'm down to 16K of RAM at the moment. Hopefully I'll have this board built soon so I can continue to mess around with the SWTPC.

Not to mention how much more efficient this new RAM is. You can feel the heat radiating off the boards when they are all plugged in!! They supposedly take up somewhere like 1.5A...that's a fair bit!

Kyle
 
If you're feeling impatient to try kicad, there is always ubuntu. I installed kicad just last night on my ubuntu system and it seems to work pretty well.

All you have to do is open the "ubuntu software center" and search for kicad. (Then click install and you're all set)

It's usually fairly easy to get ubuntu installed to a usb thumb drive or something while running from a live cd. (That way you won't need to modify the contents of your hard drive at all)

It should work fine with any recent (intel) mac if I'm not mistaken.

I'm not sure how familiar with linux you are, but it's worth a try if you are feeling impatient to get started.

Just be very careful to not install it to your hard drive unless you are sure you know what you are doing. I wouldn't want a mistake like that on my conscience for recommending that you try something like this. :shocked:

If you don't think you understand the process very well, I would suggest to err on the side of caution.
 
Well, have I got a story for ya'll! I happened to have an Ubuntu CD laying around, so I figured I would put it on my thumb drive and boot from that. I go through the instal process and everything seems to go smoothly. I restart my computer and...it won't boot. It gives me a flashing folder with a question mark on a grey screen. I don't know what happened!

Currently I am on my iPod touch, waiting for the MacBook to finish reinstalling OSX.

I did not realize that KiCAD also was for Mac! That was not clear on the website, but seems quite clear on the Wiki.

Kyle
 
Wait... You understand that to make a bootable thumb drive you boot to the live cd Without Installing it to the hard drive, and run an application built into ubuntu to create the bootable usb drive? :confused:

There is actually a built-in program to do this, not the usual install process. (at least in recent versions)

You click: System, Administration, USB startup disk creator.
 
Yup, that's exactly what I did. I had a 4GB thumb drive, and it seemed to work! That was until I restarted my Mac and found it wouldn't boot either.

After completely reformating my drive and reverting back to my last Time Machine backup (last night), everything's back to normal, with Linux out of the picture.

From the Apple support guys I talked to, I'm not the first one to have this problem. I'm just glad the fix was as easy as it was, and that I had a recent backup.

Yeah, I was using 9.04, and I don't think it had that option. Not that I saw, anyways.

And back to KiCAD: though they do have a downloadable version of it for OS X, it has not been "released" for Mac. I've not had a lot of time to play around with it, but I think I can see why it hasn't been released yet. There are lots of missing folder warnings, etc. Kind of annoying...but it looks nice! Definitely has a Linux feel to it.

Kyle
 
If you have to get a win mahine, try thrifts and things, see if you can get a 700-800mhz machine cheap. Worth a shot. And if that's all you do with it it ought to run fine. That was the first generation of XP, iirc, about 700mhz.

I just inherited a color laser, so I might make myself a few boards, too.
 
antiquekid...

Might I suggest VirtualBox for all your non-OS X needs. I use it on my Macbook and it's great. I run Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Windows 7 running under OS X with it. Installs to virtual disk images, and best of all, the program is free. Think VMWare or Parallels, only about $80 cheaper. ;)


http://www.virtualbox.org

For you non-mac people, there are also native versions which run under linux, windows, and a couple other OS's as well.
 
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I'm going to try and build my own PC before I go off to college. I won't be gaming any, but I definitely want the fastest computer I can afford. I don't care much about graphics either...so I think I'll be saving a bunch of money building my own.

At the same time, I'd consider getting an iMac, but I don't know yet...I've been VERY happy with my MacBook, and I've had it for 1.5 years.

I'm definitely considering downloading VirtualBox, but I'm still worried about this Linux stuff. It was a pain to go through what I did to get everything restored. Luckily everything's fine now. We'll see though! If I can get my hands on XP, I'll probably download VirtualBox. Do you think it's just as good as Parallels Desktop?

Kyle
 
. . . but I'm still worried about this Linux stuff. It was a pain to go through what I did to get everything restored. Luckily everything is fine now.
Click to expand...
I'm glad you got things back. But I must say that your experience with Linux is unusual. Few people would install to a HDD by mistake, so there must be some kind of lesson for you there. :) I hope you give it another try. Non proprietary software has a lot of advantages - especially if you like to have control over your computers. Also, there are other FOSS choices besides Linux. I just installed the new FreeBSD 8.0 and I must say that is a very friendly system. It looks like it might be more easily configurable than Linux as well as being more secure. I haven't gone there yet, but I see that KDE is in the ports repository. BSD with KDE has GOT to be the ultimate desktop system!
 
No, I didn't install it to the hard drive. I installed it to my 4GB thumb drive. When I called Apple, the guy said he's heard of that before (Linux screwing up when installing it onto a flash drive). Something with Ubuntu and installing didn't work. The live trial version works fine though.

Trust me, I am not inept to installing an operating system, and I can tell the difference between a 4GB thumb drive and a 150GB hard drive. Plus the computer didn't boot either Mac OS X or Ubuntu afterwards, so something clearly went wrong.

Also, when I tried using the OS X boot disks to reinstall 10.5, it claimed 10.5.8 was on my hard drive still. Just for whatever reason, it wouldn't boot. Nor would it finish the OS X installation...I had to erase the hard drive first. Oh, well...

I might give it another try...but I think I'll try and stick with OS X for now.

Kyle
 
antiquekid3 said:
No, I didn't install it to the hard drive. I installed it to my 4GB thumb drive. When I called Apple, the guy said he's heard of that before (Linux screwing up when installing it onto a flash drive). Something with Ubuntu and installing didn't work. The live trial version works fine though.

Trust me, I am not inept to installing an operating system, and I can tell the difference between a 4GB thumb drive and a 150GB hard drive. Plus the computer didn't boot either Mac OS X or Ubuntu afterwards, so something clearly went wrong.

Also, when I tried using the OS X boot disks to reinstall 10.5, it claimed 10.5.8 was on my hard drive still. Just for whatever reason, it wouldn't boot. Nor would it finish the OS X installation...I had to erase the hard drive first. Oh, well...

I might give it another try...but I think I'll try and stick with OS X for now.
Kyle
Click to expand...
Sorry Kyle, I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't know how to install! :) I just thought there was a reason that things went wrong and it would be educational to find out what that was. After all, where else could something write to other than the HDD if it was to survive a reboot? Since 10.5.8 was still there you could probably have saved yourself a lot of trouble by simply fixing the MBR. When the installation came to "boot options" is likely where things went wrong. That's not really a Linux "problem" and I certainly wouldn't trust "the guy at Apple" to be an expert, although I'm sure he's probably a nice guy. :) Anyway - sometimes it's a good idea to stick with what you know. :)

BTW: the "live trial version" is not a "trial". It will keep going (it's GPL) and is an excellent recovery disc for all kinds of systems. You can even use it to rescue data from a crashed windows system sometimes. People also use them to do their banking because running off a CD is secure.
 
antiquekid3 said:
I'm going to try and build my own PC before I go off to college. I won't be gaming any, but I definitely want the fastest computer I can afford. I don't care much about graphics either...so I think I'll be saving a bunch of money building my own.

At the same time, I'd consider getting an iMac, but I don't know yet...I've been VERY happy with my MacBook, and I've had it for 1.5 years.

I'm definitely considering downloading VirtualBox, but I'm still worried about this Linux stuff. It was a pain to go through what I did to get everything restored. Luckily everything's fine now. We'll see though! If I can get my hands on XP, I'll probably download VirtualBox. Do you think it's just as good as Parallels Desktop?

Kyle
Click to expand...

I've never used Parallels personally, but VBox is a VERY good program. For the price it can't be beat, and if you don't like an OS installation, just delete the profile and the disk image.

I have to use it mainly for our VPN client for accessing the network at my work. They don't have a program for OS X.
 
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