Amiga 600 schematics nearly put into Kicad

[katarakt]

Really amazing what you've done mick

[nogginthenog]

That's really impressive and probably way beyond my skills!
How are you planning to solder it?

[Mick]

I'm going to send Acill some boards to let him solder/test for me as my soldering skills are only very basic. I can recap through hole boards that I'm not afraid to damage in the process that's about it.

KiCad isn't so hard if you persist with learning it, once you know how KiCad works the hardest part for me was probably looking through data sheets and making the custom footprints, the schematics and layout was just a grind more than anything. There's a bit of basic math working out distances and measurements at times but you can use a calculator for that. Once I switched from using paper printouts and a ruler to GIMP and the measurement tool then measuring locations became a lot more accurate too.

I'm pretty good with computers which I've always put down to having an Amiga 500 at an early age.

edit: I should probably give a shout out to AmigaPCB.org as I don't think I could have layed it out without their website.

[Acill]

Originally Posted by Mick

I'm going to send Acill some boards to let him solder/test for me as my soldering skills are only very basic. I can recap through hole boards that I'm not afraid to damage in the process that's about it.

edit: I should probably give a shout out to AmigaPCB.org as I don't think I could have layed it out without their website.

Looking forward to getting them and putting one together. I just hope all turns out well. Its more or less the last of the modern machines that we havent done yet. It will be nice to have.

Amigapcb.org is my most used page! I live on that dang site, lol!

[Mick]

I hope so too as I'm quite heavily invested in it now both in terms of time and money.

It might be the middle of next week when I post it now because the post office has been flooded.

[lesta_smsc]

Fantastic! The Amiga A600 will always be special as it was my 1st Amiga! I love how we now have several 'new' boards, just wish the custom chips could be 're-created' to help with improving the 'stock' of Amiga's lol.

[Acill]

Received the board and am slowly getting the passives all put on. Its a slow process, but will hopefully pay out when complete!

[Mick]

Bricking it here.

Although, I don't see why it shouldn't work short of manufacturing or auto routing issue. I appreciate you testing it anyhow. Keen to get my A1200 board trialed if it works.

CD32 looks potentially doable but I'm a bit exhausted by it all atm and don't suppose there's much demand.

[demon-knight]

@Mick Would love you to do a CD32 that would be awesome to see that get some love!

[Acill]

If you were to pick another the CD32 is the best choice. The 1200 has two new versions done and working currently. The CD32 is a great candidate!

[Mick]

I've already more or less finished the A1200, I just need to do a bit of final measuring for it. I'm not so interested in the A600 myself but I'd like to have a minimalistic A1200 board.

I have a ReAmiga but I would have preferred something like Chucky's unmodified board myself but it's still untested I think and stuff like the video filters are a problem anyway.

[CD32Freak]

I've decided to remove my message, because it is off-topic and I will start a new thread in the near future when I'm ready

[Mick]

Is that one you've done CD32Freak?

By minimalistic I just mean not adding too many custom modifications and trying to keep the boards as close as possible to the originals.

I've not looked into it all that thoroughly but one of the problems I see with the CD32 is it has PS2 video output and the CXA1145/2075 DAC's have different output circuits for it, so I'd have to add a couple of extra parts for the CXA2075 in a parallel circuit I think.

Since I saw the schematics for the CD32 PS2 output, I've thought about adding a PS2 socket to my A600/A1200 as an option instead of the RF modulator but it'd mean too many extra components unless I don't add CXA1145 PS2 support and just have it exclusively for the CXA2075, but I don't want to add something that only half works either and isn't RGB better anyway?

I could bin off the CXA1145 entirely but then it goes against my philosophy of keeping things original and being able to transplant broken boards.

This is kind of why I wanted to release files and encourage others to play around with KiCad, there's loads of possibilities and not everyone wants the same thing.

[CD32Freak]

Sorry for going off-topic and stealing your thread, but I thought I should reply
I figured out how to convert the layers at amigapcb.org from PDF into gerber files with a rare expensive tool named FAB 3000. They are created with SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), but it was a challenge to find the right scale, because at the site they are blown up

I used Sprint Layout (thanks to Chucky ) to design the border outline, because in KiCad it is horribly difficult. I am not finished yet, but one day I will reveal how I did it

Anyway, over at a1k.org there is someone who is designing a mini-itx CD32: https://www.a1k.org/forum/index.php?threads/72645/

[Mick]

No worries.

If I don't need to do it that's fine by me, I don't even know if anything I've done even works yet anyway but assuming it did I was going to give it a go to give it a bit of love. If there's already some projects in the pipeline I'm happy to leave it, I only did the A1200 as a personal project, A600 was more of a mess around and then eventually for the community.

[Mick]

I'll still make the A1200 available to everyone, by personal project I just meant it was driven my wanting to build one for personal use.

[CD32Freak]

Feel free to build whatever you want, don't be discouraged by what others have been starting. You build from schematics, I've been using data from amigapcb.org, which is still in beta

[Mick]

I've relied on AmigaPCB.org a lot as well for measuring the layout, I don't think I'd have even tried without it not unless I'd been able to get a de-soldered motherboard.

I'll see how things go.

[rvctech]

Hi CD32Freak,

Originally Posted by CD32Freak

I figured out how to convert the layers at amigapcb.org from PDF into gerber files with a rare expensive tool named FAB 3000. They are created with SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), but it was a challenge to find the right scale, because at the site they are blown up

The data on amigapcb.org came from the original Gerber files from Commodore, congratulations on converting it back to the original data again ;-).

I think a re-made CD32 is a poor idea because it creates a demand for spare parts (like Akiko chips) which then makes it hard to find repair parts for real CD32s. I just don't see the point..

[CD32Freak]

Yeah, so I've heard. Some Germans got ahold of the original Commodore Gerber files, but they are not willing (or allowed?) to release it to the public. I thought, let's investigate this further and I was able to reverse them back into Gerber files again

Although I believe they put in some deliberate mistakes. For example, the traces of the expansion pins are longer then on an original CD32 motherboard. Some drillholes are also incorrect.

Anyway, I'm just doing it for fun to see if it is possible and for anyone who always wanted a CD32

In my opinion, the only future for the Amiga is the Apollo Core 68080. Better yet, a marriage between the 68080 and A1200+ inside a new Amiga case design