Mistakes were made…

Obviously. This is me we’re talking about.

The first 65816 ATX board is here. So I’ve installed sockets for most of the chips (I didn’t bother for the 555 timers, since I have about a billion of those.
Don’t worry, a video is in the works right now, I’ve just been busy with work and travel. I’ve got the footage imported in, just working out the pacing.

At first I didn’t have enough sockets for everything, so I wasted a few days waiting for more sockets to arrive. I did put in what I had while I waited, but especially the DIP-32 package for the 128K system RAM was a problem.

I found that the DIN41216 connectors I selected and the footprint I picked for the PCB aren’t a match, so I will have to go back and change the footprint for V2. It’s not a big deal for now since the headers are also exposed.

Finally I was 2 short on each of the DIP-14 and DIP-20 for the 74xx series logic. Takes about 3 days from Jameco, so I had some downtime.

There was also a mislabeled chip, as IC7 is the delay module, not a 555 timer.

The two sockets that will eventually be the base video RAM won’t get populated right now as they’re not connected to anything.

If you hadn’t seen on my social media, I had to make a surface mount module into a through hole module. I bought a big pack of SMD to THT adapters for that, part of why I have IC7 mislabeled, usually the only DIP-8 slots on the board are for 555 timers. It wasn’t pretty when I made it, as I have very very very very little experience with SMD soldering. But in the end I made one for each delay chip, and checked the connections to make sure I didn’t bridge anything or leave any traces broken.

The headers and sockets went in just fine. It took some effort to get the ZIF Socket lined up, so I made a note to do slightly larger diameter vias for the holes and maybe a long footprint instead of the round. Actually, it would just match up with a regular DIP-28 socket, so I guess I’ll just go with that.

#MistakesWereMade

Multiple mistakes are all right here.

First, the mislabeled 555 timer for IC7.
Second, you can see the headers are mounted at an angle. I must have used a wide DIP-8 footprint, maybe? Another thing to look at as I revise the board design.
Third, actually building those was a nightmare. I think at some point I had every pair of pins that could be bridged bridged, and used about an entire spool of desoldering braid to clean it up.

I did decide to leave the extra logic gates unpopulated. I’ll add headers when I need to use the gates.

Despite several orders coming in…

I already placed 2 orders and waited for them, just to realize that I didn’t have any 74HC/T32 just a 74LS32 OR gate. I dropped that in hoping it would work, but it just went crazy hot right away. That means I’m at a stopping point for the moment. Once the new chips arrive, I’ll see if the thing boots up with the 6502 Hello World code!