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Building the XTIDE

C

curtis

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2003
Messages
1,176
Location
Amarillo, TX
Well, I got my circuit board in and FINALLY got all the parts from Jameco, Mouser, and Rat Shack.

Looks like I have me a project for the 4th of July weekend! Just after I (hopefully) finish my A+ exam this coming Tuesday (June 29).

I'll post pictures of my progress IF anyone is interested.
 
good luck!

let us know what happens and if you have any problems. There's about 200 of them out there in the world now, so I suspect just about every possible problem has been bumped into by now, hopefully!
 
Mine worked for a while, but not it seems like some soldering joints has broken free. I have about 5 ajacent bytes missing per 50 bytes that is being read. Perhaps I should try to get myself a more decent soldering iron...
 
Question for you guys who have built the XT-IDE... Do you end up having to order some of the electronic pieces in high multiples? In going through the build list at Jameco, several pieces must be ordered in lots of 10/20/100, etc, yet we only need 1 or 2 of these to solder in per card.

Meanwhile, Mouser seems to be about double the price of Jameco on many of these pieces, but also lets you order in lesser multiples - but the cost per unit increase rather negates the differences in ordering from Mouser over Jameco.

I'm not against having a few spare parts, but if I could shave the cost of the parts to build the two PCBs I ordered down by $5-10, I'd be quite happy. And in case anyone's wondering, I've never ordered electronic parts from an electronics store before, so I was surprised at some of the minimum orders on these - and this may just be quite common and expected to you guys who work with this kind of thing alot :)

-Mav
 
per said:
Mine worked for a while, but not it seems like some soldering joints has broken free. I have about 5 ajacent bytes missing per 50 bytes that is being read. Perhaps I should try to get myself a more decent soldering iron...
Click to expand...

yes. or clean it off to make sure there is a good heat transfer. I suggest hitting every pin on every socket (well, probably not the ROM socket, since you'd know pretty quick if that ever failed). Just heat up the pin enough to push it around inside the hole. That should reflow the solder enough to make a new connection. Of the couple boards that I had problems with, that did the trick and it's pretty easy to do.
 
One of the secrets to a good solder joint is to keep your soldering iron clean, and don't let the flux and other crude to build up on the tip. Tin your tip and wipe the excess of with an old, slightly damp rag. Apply heat from the tip evenly and try not to burn into the pcb, wiring, etc. The result of the solder job should appear to be "shiny". If the joint looks "cloudy" or "dull", chance are you're going to have a "cold" solder joint.
 
Last edited:
per said:
Mine worked for a while, but not it seems like some soldering joints has broken free. I have about 5 ajacent bytes missing per 50 bytes that is being read. Perhaps I should try to get myself a more decent soldering iron...
Click to expand...

If you can't find a faulty solder joint, check the 74LS537 latches. I found one to be faulty when assembling the 10 I was sent by Hargle...it would drop bits randomly during transactions.
 
glitch said:
If you can't find a faulty solder joint, check the 74LS537 latches. I found one to be faulty when assembling the 10 I was sent by Hargle...it would drop bits randomly during transactions.
Click to expand...

In my cause it worked fine in the start (I backed up 15MB using it), then I twisted the board a little just to make sure everything was in-place, and after that I've gotten data corruption errors. I'm 90% sure it's a soldering joint.
 
Where to get PCBs?

Where to get PCBs?

Hey guys, sorry if there's a link for this somewhere but I haven't found it yet. Has anyone done a batch of PCBs for this recently? A friend and I are each looking to build one, I thought about etching my own board but that's a lot of vias to deal with and I still wouldn't have the nice solder mask and silkscreen. I have pretty much all the other parts laying around so I just need a couple of blank PCBs.

Alternately, if I can get 10-15+ people to pay a deposit I could have a batch of boards fabricated but I usually get left holding the bag with a bunch of unsold boards when people flake out so I'm hesitant to do that. Price per drops dramatically as the quantity goes up.
 
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