Leaderboard

Thanks fellas. Fingers crossed on getting something better soon. Ha a clever one i am not Bob, your fault finding and scope work are miles better than what I can do. I think anyone who understands schematics can easily build boards with no worries. Its just going through the pain barrier of learning how to build a schematic and learning to use the all the design software. Once you do that it all transfers over to the board layout-so you cant connect anything up incorrectly theres error check tools to stop you missing anything too. Im more of a moth hitting a light bulb until I crack it 😆

I have to say Matty, this is all very impressive 👌

I got 5 manufactured in China... the manufacturing tabs down the sides of the board are for the component placing machine and snap off. Rather than ground traces ive made large ground planes to help reduce noise and reduced the length og power traces and kept them isolated on the back of the board. The Decoupling caps are now pretty much right on the +vcc pins. I will be keeping one unpopulated like this to show in interviews...

I built a schematic for the board first then laid it all out (more on this on the following board). With a 4 layer board i could have made it very compact or laid it out orientated totally differently but didnt think it would 'look' right. I decided on keeping it looking roughly the same with the same dimensions. I also wanted it to look as cool as possible. Here's a 3d render of the finished design-note the JPM rosette in place of the Varta mofo battery!

I selected all new components and prototyped them all running on original Card. Zn404 is engineered out in 3 components. All the replacement transistors selections are modern. There...is...alot of planning and datasheet work not shown in this picture!