Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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One of the most frustrating parts of acquiring a new CadSoft EAGLE license is waiting for the license to actually arrive. CadSoft insists on sending them via UPS, along with a full new set of manuals and paperwork. This incurs a $15 shipping charge, plus a 3-5 day wait for it all to arrive. Also, if one is following some upgrade path one ends up with quite a few redundant manuals.
I’ll be taking the 4.1 manuals out for recycling today.
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Today was such a nice day (~46°F) that I was able to get out for a really nice ride with Nick, Erick, Marty, and Kristy. (I hope I spelled their names right…) We through neighborhoods from downtown Mt. Clemens, over to 16 Mile, out to the Dodge Park area, to the spillway, then back. Total was just over 20 miles, and except for the occasional patches of 4″ deep slush or standing water it was a very nice ride.
After the ride we ended up gorging ourselves at Chicken Shack, then heading over to Dragonmead for some really nice beers. Now I’m home, relaxing, and putzing with some electronics stuff but not really accomplishing anything.
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I’ve been using a camera app called SnapPhoto since switching to using a TMobile G1 / HTC Dream / Google Phone. It’s a rather nice camera app, as it does stability detection before taking the photo, manual white balance setting, JPEG quality settings, etc.
But, what I like most about it is that it uses the built-in geolocation stuff (GPS and/or cellular) to add the GPS EXIF headers which Gallery can parse and make a Google Map from. Therefore, if you visit my Moblog and click the View Album on a Map link, you’ll be presented with a map showing where I’ve taken Moblog photos.
As an exercise, find my house and you can get a link to the photo above of my breakfast from today (coffee and a Mexican pastry). Now I just need to wait for there to be a good Gallery upload app for Android and these can be taken, captioned, and posted all directly from the phone. (There’s one which kinda works, but not with my httpd and in a few other odd situations…)
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This is a JAE D03 connector used for Atari SIO, pulled from the Okidata printer controller mentioned earlier. I used this to draw a part footprint for SIO connectors and so far this has worked out well. A couple minor adjustments have been made, but the original drawing is still accurate.
Today I received a few connectors I had ordered from B & C ComputerVisions and while they ended up being a slightly different type (side by side photos here) the footprint will work for these as well. Additionally, I pulled open all of the Atari hardware I have here and found that all the SIO connectors seemed to be one of these two types.
The Japanese-made hardware (1010 and 1027) had the thick-based JAE D03 connectors and the other stuff (1050 from Singapore and 800XL from Hong Kong) had some clone of the thin-based part. I had to adjust the outline slightly because the thin based parts have a somewhat larger footprint, but this wasn’t a big deal as the pads all matched.
I was a bit disappointed to find out that the parts from B & C ComputerVisions are pulls, complete with slightly bent / solder-y pins and dirt on them but they washed up nicely and should be fine to use.
For reference, here’s the four different (two types) of SIO connectors I’d found, taken from this post that I made at AtariAge asking if anyone knows of any different part styles:
Leave a CommentJAE D03: In all the Japanese-made Atari hardware I have. Thick base, well made. Held down with self-tapping screws or riveted in place. (Photo)
MX 7514-4-13: Received from B & C ComputerVisions when I ordered two connectors. I expected them to be new, but they are very obviously pulls (dirty parts / slightly bent pins / solder on pins). (Photo)
CO12995 5-82-4 MEC-5: Inside a Hong Kong-made 800XL. Appears identical to the MX 7514-4-13. Riveted in place. (Photo)
UNKNOWN: Connector similar to the previous two, in a Singapore-made 1050. I could read TAIWAN on the back, but while I could ensure it’s not the same as the part in the 800XL I couldn’t make out the rest of the part numbers. Held down to the PCB only by the 15 pins and nothing in the larger holes. (Photo)
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Here is the first draft of the front panel for the SDrive NUXX. Yes, I’m trying to make it as 80s / cheesey as possible while still looking decent. Today I received an order from Digi-Key and validated the footprints from all the received parts against a print of the PCB, and everything looks good. Here is a photo of the SD slot sitting on a print, which I think looks rather nifty. I also spent some time trying out the LEDs (Image 1 · Image 2) to ensure that their brightness sufficient and even enough.
Here is an image of the rear panel, including the relatively massive cutout for the SIO connector. Hopefully it won’t be much longer before I get my hands on some more SIO connectors, can validate their footprints / sizing, and then order up the prototype PCBs.
Needless to say, I’m getting pretty excited about this project. It’ll be really nice if it works out.
Leave a CommentAs the length of any thread about electronics increases, the odds of someone mentioning integrating whatever the topic is at hand an an Arduino approaches one.
(Thanks for the new term, Scott.)
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Today my non-profit license upgrade for CadSoft EAGLE (to version 5) arrived so I was able to begin laying out the PCB for the SDrive NUXX. The first order of parts should arrive later this week, and hopefully by the end of the weekend I’ll be ready to order the prototype run of boards.
(Yes, the main ground plane is missing from that rendering. The small one there is for the built-in AVR programmer.)
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While it may not look like much, this is the first completed draft of the schematic for my rebuild / remake of SDrive. This may not look like much, but attached to every symbol is a footprint for every part which I intend to use in the finished device. All that is left is to validate the part footprints against actual items, lay out the board, give it 20 or 30 sanity checks, then order the prototype PCBs. Yay!
(While the name in that document says SDrive: nuxx Edition the name shall be SDrive NUXX.)
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Not wanting to sit in traffic I decided to stay at work late and poke around with the Atari SIO connectors from an Okidata printer which
Because this footprint was done in CadSoft EAGLE I can’t easily dimension it, so that might make it a little difficult for other people to reuse. Maybe I’ll try and do a DXF of it or something. While measuring it I came across a couple unexpected (for me) things which lead me to believe that it was hand-designed way back when. For example, the overall footprint seems to be 2:1 width:height ratio (1.86″ x .93″), and the pins have a .14″ spacing between each other, with the pins forming equilateral triangles.
(And yes, I will be CC licensing this footprint once I’ve tuned it to fit all the SIO connector variants that I can find.)
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An order arrived from Mouser today, which means that I was able to complete the AMB γ1 Modular Miniature DAC that I’ve been building. Complete it’s a bit smaller than a standard business card and feels very solid. The board assembly slides forward and back ever so slightly in the case when inserting or removing the USB cable, but it’s nothing that’s a problem. (A/B this photo and this photo to see the shift.)
Tonight I’m using it connected it to to the Millett Hybrid Maxed that I built last year, my most-favorite Sennheiser HD570 headphones, and each of my computers, and this sounds darn good. Now I’m realizing just how low quality some of the audio recordings on my computer actually are, but better than that I can now† listen to high quality audio at reasonable levels while Danielle sleeps in the next room. Yay!
I’m really enjoying this.
† Yes, I realize that I could have just used the high quality line out in my Mac Pro with the amp, but I’m also expecting to use this when at work or with computers with crap audio (eg: Dell D620).
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