All done: the shift/jump unit backplane is now complete. I think it turned out pretty darn good, all things considered.
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Solder-side view. The gaggle of wires at the bottom is the
B register bus. Since the pinout of the 40-pin socket is
such that the rightmost pin must go to the leftmost breakout,
there was no way to run the traces without using vias, which
I am not able to do. So a little point-to-point soldering finishes it off. |
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Component side |
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I got these plastic snap-in feet from Jameco. Must simpler than trying
to scrounge up brass standoffs and screws. |
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The worst section of etching on the board. Surprisingly I only had to
re-route two of the traces. Also notice the gummy stuff between the
pins -- I still haven't perfected my flux application, and I tend to use
too much, resulting in a gummy mess between all the pins. |
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I'm very happy with how the silkscreen came out. It's surprisingly
legible, and I'm shocked it lined up as well as it does, given
that I had to align it pretty much blind. |
The next steps will be building the four data transfer modules (each board will just be a pair of 74245 tristate buffers on an etched PCB), the control module (perfboard with point-to-point connections), and an A/B register bus simulator.
The A/B register bus simulator will just be a board with 32 DIP switches (16 for bus A and 16 for bus B) and a little control logic to set the outputs to hi-Z when the write signal is not asserted. This will let me test whether the board actually works, before having actually constructed a working register file.
To remove flux I use an old tooth brush and lots of acetone, after a couple of seconds of scrubbing and it's gone. Rinse with water and dry.
ReplyDeleteGreat tip! I'll give that a try.
ReplyDelete