Although the stripboard version of the SmartParallel board is working, one niggle remained. When the printer was switched on, but the SmartParallel board wasn’t powered, I was getting random resets of the printer. They weren’t as frequent as with the breadboard prototype, but they were there, sometimes. Also, there was a problem with signals effectively ‘back powering’ (I’m not sure… Read more »
While idly mulling over how one might create a control panel for an eight-bit microcomputer – something I plan to do for my (very) slowly progressing Zolatron 64 project – it occurred to me that there might be occasions when it would be useful to send a brief pulse. I didn’t have a specific use case in mind. In fact,… Read more »
Well, it’s happened. My first PCBs have arrived. Now it’s just a matter of summoning the courage to solder on the parts and see if it works. This is the board I designed as part of my Eagle vs KiCad series. It breaks out a Centronics-compatible DB25 socket, with the data lines being driven by a shift register. There’s a… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 7] Right, so all the parts for my HexMonitor board are on the schematic, including the ones I created myself. Now it’s time to hook them up into an actual circuit. This is the easy bit, right?
[Eagle vs KiCad part 6] In the last post, I managed to get most of the parts I needed on to the schematic in KiCad. There were some problems, though.
[Eagle vs KiCad part 5] Having got as far as a complete schematic for my HexMonitor project with Eagle, it’s time to try the same thing with KiCad. And just as I did with Eagle, my plan is to design my HexMonitor project that takes signals from one eight-bit and one 16-bit bus and display their values on a four-digit, seven-segment… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 2] Okay, so it’s time to start on the road of deciding whether I want to design PCBs in Eagle or KiCad. I’ve already talked about this a little, but here’s where I’m at. My natural inclination is towards KiCad. It’s open and it has none of the restrictions of the free version of Eagle (and… Read more »
Well, maybe not so much aha! More like FFS. Weird as it sounds, debugging errors is one of the things I enjoy about both coding and electronics. I’m an amateur in both fields and waste little time on planning my projects. I prefer just to delve right in. Rather than sketch out a circuit first, for example, I just get… Read more »