01 April 2018, 00:48 | #21 | |
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And forgive me but paying a professional firm, with production grade equipment and software, and several trained engineers who do this for a living seems a much safer bet for a good result, and completely accurate, and correctly made board than "throwing the cash" to one man hobby project (however competent, we have no idea if hese is a PCB layout professional). And his board is manually routed which is basically a different layout than the original, and it's unknown if it was done considering EMI elimination, noise, crosstalk, correct ground plane design, signal propagation etc.. There is much more to PCB layout than just connecting pads and vias, it's a whole science in itself. There are modern PCB analysis techniques that guarantee fault free data, they'll run full test point analysis on the board to trace out all (or most) signals first, after which probably a combination of xray, and laminate separation (where they remove the substrate one by one to expose the next copper layer) for full mapping. This is a known automated process and the yield of these are close to 100% correct layout data, and the routing will not be done fully manual. So the result will be a near 100% replica of the original Rev B board, and wouldn't you agree that the original C= engineers knew much more about correct PCB design for their own hardware, than any "amiga guy" today (inlcuding myself)? I would like to stress that by no means I want to belittle hese's work, which is wonderful, and by all means welcome to all of us in the community, all I'm saying, I'd love to see guaranteed professional grade boards. There is place for both Rev B and CR. Last edited by tbtorro; 01 April 2018 at 00:55. |
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01 April 2018, 00:54 | #22 |
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01 April 2018, 00:59 | #23 |
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Yes and no. But for example there are design rules you can set in the layout software to avoid problems like noise, crosstalk, bad signal propagation etc.. which are automatically taken into account during autorouting so human error can be avoided or minimized.
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01 April 2018, 01:42 | #24 |
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It just seems to me a needless duplication of effort if Hese's board already works and is done, that was my point and to support an Amiga developer.
Take any Classic Amiga hardware project in the last 10 years did they hire a professional design company to layout the PCB? Not mostly, with some exceptions. Does this bother anybody? Well I guess so, now. |
01 April 2018, 01:47 | #25 | |
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01 April 2018, 01:57 | #26 |
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I am pleased that there will probably be two A4000 motherboard PCB replacements. Then there's Elenachen too. Even more pleased if any of the designs get enhanced with new stuff or improvements.
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01 April 2018, 15:34 | #27 |
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Tbtorro is correct about the dissection process here as well I donated my working A4000 motherboard to this process and its being used for the process. If you dont like the process I chose you have the option to disagree. I can guarantee the reason this hasent be done before is because of the cost. I am getting a significant discount on this project. The reason I went local is because of the ability to get it, be able to check in on the progress, and to have a US manufacturer with the ability to produce boards if a group buy gets requested as well as having the ability to get the board redesigned if also requested.. This pays a full time person dont forget, and delivery is estimated at 4 weeks.
In the end we will have two great options as a result. One newer style that a lot of people didnt get to own, including myself and one that is the most common and prone to failures being available to use as a 1:1 direct replacement for those of us that are doing repairs. I can tell you without a doubt I would rather use a new board and do a transplant to fix one then the time consuming fault finding I do now! |
01 April 2018, 17:19 | #28 |
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In any professional package, using the manual point-to-point routing protocol will automatically generate traces compliant with your constraints, or at the very least, flag a DRC error if you violate them. It's not something you can miss unless you're so bad that you (a) didn't set up the constraints, (b) willfully ignored the errors, or (c) didn't bother running DRC. Unless they're using something which DOESN'T have constraints for capture/layout/routing, in which case, yeah, they probably shouldn't be doing a board this big with that kind of tool.
Last edited by Shadowfire; 01 April 2018 at 17:24. |
01 April 2018, 20:42 | #29 |
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Modern boards are a science with their GHz signals, low voltage logic with thousands very fine traces and vias across many layers requiring professional tools. The a A4000 motherboards are 25 year old technology probably built with tools far more primitive than what's available to the hobbyist today.
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03 April 2018, 00:10 | #30 | |
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05 April 2018, 15:31 | #31 |
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Amiga on the Lake has generously agreed to help us get this last bit of funding a bit easier for those that want to use PayPal for a donation. If you would like to donate but only have PayPal to use you can donate here and they will in return donate on your behalf to the campaign. Thanks so much to Aaron Smith for helping to offer this!
The donation link is here: http://amigaonthelake.com/aotl-donations/ |
09 April 2018, 04:51 | #32 |
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Good news! I will be going to the shop on Wednesday to make the initial payment and have work started! The goal is to have the board work done and complete in 4 to 6 weeks. The goal is to recreate the entire design. They will provide everything they create, including the PADS and Altium design databases.
The donate page can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/amiga-4000-...ith-schematics Also dont forget you can have Amiga on the Lake donate for you if you want to use paypal and dont have a card supported here. http://amigaonthelake.com/aotl-donations/ |
09 April 2018, 12:19 | #33 | ||
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Good luck to the project. I don't want a board but I would donate a bit of money to help preserve the data. |
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13 April 2018, 20:09 | #34 |
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Almost there....
Only $453 left to go |
14 April 2018, 00:10 | #35 |
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Today is a amazing update day for this project! I am happy to say that I put in the remaining balance myself to get things moving at the PCB design house. They have the original board to use, all the required information and the most important thing, they got paid! What this means is things have STARTED!!!!!!
The delivery items to us are even better now thanks to the significant speed at which we paid them, and the extra work I did to supply as much as possible to help with the creation of everything. So what will we get you may ask? Well EVERYTHING!!! The project databases in Altium, PADs and hold on......EAGLE!!!! All Gerber's, new matching schematics that go with the new layout done in tandem, BOM sheets, manufacturing guides, and things I missed I am sure. So this will allow us to not only get NEW BOARDS, but once I ahve it all organized and hosted someone can take these design files and improve on it or whatever you need! I want to thank everyone that helped make this possible. It has been a lot of stress, work and back and forth communication with the design house, but I think in the end it will be an amazing achievement! This is a real first at this level for ANY Amiga community project and you should all be very proud! I know I am. |
14 April 2018, 04:10 | #36 |
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Congratulations, this will be very helpful to the community.
Now do something about replacement cases. How about just finding a commonly available in great quantities, ATX case with a motherboard tray that will fit, then making a whole bunch of replacement trays? |
14 April 2018, 08:17 | #37 |
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This is awesome, Acill
I was already following very closely what hese did with his A4000+ Alice motherboard, but what I was really waiting for was a Rev B motherboard replica. Hats off to this great project Now I can't wait to get mine |
14 April 2018, 13:46 | #38 |
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Nice! Very happy to hear about Eagle being included now as it opens up porting to KiCAD in the future too
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14 April 2018, 16:10 | #39 | |
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14 April 2018, 16:59 | #40 |
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Some other ease of use changes will be nice to make too, like converting the board to take a standard ATX power connector over the old AT style one for example, or fixing the design issues with the audio circuit
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