The remainder of the 64NIC+ boards have shipped to CCCC for sales and distribution. The 1.0a board sillkscreen looks very professional and calls out not only the Cincinnatti club but also Eric Pratt and Till Harbaum, whose designs I utilized in creating 64NIC+.
Tag: Commodore
64NIC+ Initial Boards Arrive
The first 20 boards have belatedly arrived from the assembly house. Scheduled to arrive for the C4 EXPO, they were delayed and then sent to my work address instead of the EXPO location.
I am busy making the required minor modification to the 1.0 PCB layout to address issues found during initial testing. These 20 initial boards (+ the 2 prototypes) will be special editions, as the remainder (80) of the units will sport the 1.0a PCB design, which corrects the minor issue with the board. It will be easy to spot a 1.0 board, as much of the silkscreen artwork is missing (an error on my part in creating the files for the PCB house). Still, both the 1.0 and 1.0a boards will function the same.
ROM-el ROM Eliminator
Another project of mine requires a way to replace the 2364 ROMs on Commodore computers, so I started looking for a 2764 to 2364 adapter. After designing one, I determined that DIP EPROMs are starting to get very expensive, so I set about designing a Flash version. My tentative name is ROM-el. Since Flash is considered ROM as well, the name is a bit off, but I liked it, and only the pedantic will probably care.
64NIC+ Out for Production
2 64NIC+ boards arrived on April 20, and I assembled one in the evening. Initial testing with Devia’s NIC-Test was unsuccessful, so I gave up for the night. After work on the 21st, I pored over the schematics and determined I had miscopied a resistor layout from Eric Pratt’s 64NIC design. The resistor must be tied to ground, not Vcc. Dubious that such a small change would make the board work, I nonetheless made the change and …. it did nothing.
I decided I’d ruined one board, so I assembled the second board, taking care to make the resistor mod before plugging it in. Devia’s NIC-Test worked immediately. Later, I tried the apparently ruined board and it also worked, so it appears I did not completely ruin the board.
Given the success, I immediately released the board to production that evening.