This section

[Jeff Ledger]

Reasoning for this section:

A discussion at this year's C4 about the creation and collaboration of production of C= PCB boards turned into a 2am small group training session with Jim Brain on EAGLE PCB. (You made my whole expo this year! Thank you Jim Brain!!!)

This section has been created for those who wish to participate in a group purchase of C= PCB board designs (example: uIEC, C=Key, C=Diag, etc, etc) and the creation of new C= designs by those of us to are using EAGLE PCB and others of us who are learning it.

Questions surrounding EAGLE PCB are welcome here, as well as collaboration requests. I'll be looking a ways we can add the ability to attach finished designs, and those will be welcome as well.

This section is called to help solve the problem of those who would like to have some of the new C= PCB designed products to build for their machines, but either cannot afford to purchase an entire run, or have enough experience to brave it alone.

I'll kick this off with a link to the Freeware version of EAGLE
www.cadsoft.de/freeware.htm

Those of you wizards here, I'd like to thank you in advance for any assistance you add to this section while those of us who are new at this come up to speed.

Here's a thought... What if you could spend $50-$100 and have an entire set of C= PCB kits' (Ckey, uIEC, Rs232 interface, C=Diag, etc.) ready to assemble?

Jeff

[rockotiger]

This section has been created for those who wish to participate in a group purchase of C= PCB board designs (example: uIEC, C=Key, C=Diag, etc, etc) and the creation of new C= designs by those of us to are using EAGLE PCB and others of us who are learning it.

Oh.... I do believe I am going to enjoy this section immensely... at least from the purchasing aspect of it. I'm not much of a hardware designer, but I sure do love gadgets for my retro computers.

[MadModder]

Eagle...
I don't have much to offer (yet) but I wont convert to Eagle. I'm an Orcad guy.

[gmoon]

madmodder said:

Eagle...
I don't have much to offer (yet) but I wont convert to Eagle. I'm an Orcad guy.

Yeah. I hope this forum section isn't limited to just Eagle. Plenty of other ways to produce gerber files (which any PCB manuf can use.)

[dragos]

Certainly everyone is free to use whatever software they like. Eagle is mentioned because its free for 2-layer boards.

also, Jim Brains projects are laid out in Eagle and if it were not for him, we would probably not have this section yet

Jim taught us a lot at C4, and we hope to expand on the work he did, so that we may get some really cool things into the hands of all of us commodore nuts.

Stay tuned for an announcement on what we are working on.

-Dragos

[David Murray]

Here's an idea for you. Would it be possible to re-design a motherboard for the C64? That way you could pop out all the chips from your regular C64 and put them into a newer designed board, only the new design could also incorporate some of these extra features? That would be slick! Maybe in the process you could shed some of the old technology like the DRAM chips and go for SRAM, etc..

[Jeff Ledger]

Anything that generates compatible files is welcome here.. The main purpose of the section is to generate a C= PCB library, answer questions, and co-op orders so that people can easily afford some of the great new C= products being produced.

Great to see health responses already!

Jeff

[Jeff Ledger]

David,

Actually, you aren't far off a conversation that Jim and I had on the way to dinner.

There were a lot of VIC20 demos this year, and it seemed that most of the VIC were all acting a little skitzo because of their age. The C64 is only a few years younger, so we need to do something pretty soon.

Jim and I agreed that the responsibility should not all fall on Jeri to save us. If we produced a board that was based on modern hardware, but perhaps had a spot for the VIC and SID, we could have a new C=64. We have time still to do this...

Jeff

[David Murray]

admin said:

There were a lot of VIC20 demos this year, and it seemed that most of the VIC were all acting a little skitzo because of their age.

Yeah, My VIC-20 acts skitzo too. The border sometimes flickers for no reason and sometimes so does the background.

Jim and I agreed that the responsibility should not all fall on Jeri to save us.

Agreed. In fact, it seems as if she has abandoned us all compeltely.

If we produced a board that was based on modern hardware, but perhaps had a spot for the VIC and SID, we could have a new C=64. We have time still to do this...

Yes! yes! There is even a modern SID replacement, although I'm not sure how well it would work compared to the real thing with timing and everything. Anyway, I guess the main thing I'd like to see in a modern remake of the C64 motherboard is the ability to store files in the machine, either with an approach similar to the DTV's flash memory, or maybe something more along the lines of a 1541-III or something. I think it would be great to pull out my 64C and hook it to the TV in the living room, but not require to bring out a huge disk drive and also not require the huge proprietary power brick either. This can already be achieved to some extent using a modified DTV, or a modified 64. But a project like this would be awesome because it would be rock solid instead of having a million soldered wires everywhere inside. It would also probably be more reliable than the original C64 in the long run (except for VIC-II and SID)

[Leif Bloomquist]

In the case of the VIC-20 display, it's the VIC-I (6560?) chips that are going bad, I think. While we could make new a PCB fairly easily, such a specialized chip isn't going to be easy to replace, if possible (on hobbyist budgets, even if pooled.)

[gmoon]

dragos said:

also, Jim Brains projects are laid out in Eagle and if it were not for him, we would probably not have this section yet

Jim taught us a lot at C4, and we hope to expand on the work he did, so that we may get some really cool things into the hands of all of us commodore nuts.

I'm not dissing Jim or Eagle .

A couple points, though:

AFAIK, Circuit boards designed with the freeware Eagle cannot be sold for a profit. Given away at cost, maybe.

There is also a size limit in that version (certainly much smaller than a C64 motherboard.)

A possible loophole--If Jim has the commercially-licensed version, he could download projects created w/the freeware version, then produce Gerber files, etc. using his setup. Boards produced from those files would probably be legit.

[Jim Brain]

madmodder said:

Eagle...
I don't have much to offer (yet) but I wont convert to Eagle. I'm an Orcad guy.

While I don't have issues with OrCAD (It's one of the premier tools for professional board design houses), I just checked the price, and it's $5995.00, assuming the discounts available are still valid.

Jim

[Jim Brain]

admin said:

Reasoning for this section:

A discussion at this year's C4 about the creation and collaboration of production of C= PCB boards turned into a 2am small group training session with Jim Brain on EAGLE PCB. (You made my whole expo this year! Thank you Jim Brain!!!)

No problem. I didn't really have anything new to demo at the show, but I thought showing off PCB design might help someone.

Jim

[Jim Brain]

gmoon said:

I'm not dissing Jim or Eagle .

A couple points, though:

AFAIK, Circuit boards designed with the freeware Eagle cannot be sold for a profit. Given away at cost, maybe.

There is also a size limit in that version (certainly much smaller than a C64 motherboard.)

A possible loophole--If Jim has the commercially-licensed version, he could download projects created w/the freeware version, then produce Gerber files, etc. using his setup. Boards produced from those files would probably be legit.

Correct, if you make a profit, you need to register at least the $49.00 of EAGLE.

But, if you just build at cost, you're OK.

Note also that the license is not transferrable. In other words, even if I produce a board with a licensed version of EAGLE, someone else can't make a profit without owning a licensed version of EAGLE.

Note that any license would satisfy the requirement. So, if I create a huge multi-layer board in my licensed EAGLE version, you can still make a board for profit using the $49.00 version. It will let you create the Gerbers, even though you will not be able to edit the EAGLE files. In fact, if you're not making a profit, you can use the freeware version to create the gerbers and drill files, no matter the size of the board or the number of layers. They did that so board houses could use a free version to create the files and just accept BRD files from EAGLE users.

So, the requirement is there, but it's just $49.00 to be legitimate.

Jim

[sjgray]

adric22 said:

Here's an idea for you. Would it be possible to re-design a motherboard for the C64? That way you could pop out all the chips from your regular C64 and put them into a newer designed board, only the new design could also incorporate some of these extra features? That would be slick! Maybe in the process you could shed some of the old technology like the DRAM chips and go for SRAM, etc..

I've been thinking along the same lines myself, but I have a different approach to consider. Design a slot system and split up the C64 into separate boards. This way each board is smaller and easier to design/debug. Once you have a slot system you can get people to design cool add-ons like extra sid board, speech synthesizer, 80 column board, or even CPU board (think MagicVoice, BI-80, Data80, SuperCPU etc converted to addon card).

This approach has already been done with the PET (8032 and Fat-40) by Andre Fachat
www.6502.org/users/andre/cbmhw/ryofat40/index.html

I contacted him about a C64 version and he said it would be do-able.

Now, if the bus/slot architecture is designed properly you might even be able to make a new Commodore re-mix machine, say one with both a VIC-I and VIC-II to be both Vic20 and C64 compatible... I know it would be hard but I've looked at the schematics for just about every commodore 8-bit machine and I think it's possible.

I think you would need to break it down something like this:

- CPU board (would also contain PLA)
- RAM board (might use SIMM memory)
- Video board (VIC-II)
- Sound board (could be dual SID)
- IO board (keyboard, IEC etc)

Steve