+Stephen Posted May 30, 2017 Share Posted May 30, 2017 We have liftoff of another 1088XEL. Forgive the crappy B&W photos - I am putting a PAL signal into my NTSC 1084S via composite. 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted May 30, 2017 Share Posted May 30, 2017 Me too! I've got to do a few minor things including updating U1MB and getting that flux off, but I am excited it is working. Let the testing begin! 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted May 31, 2017 Author Share Posted May 31, 2017 (edited) And here's a teaser as to how the production version will look... - Michael EDIT: Except it'll have tinned not gold pads. no reason for the extra expense since everything gets soldered anyway. Edited May 31, 2017 by mytekcontrols 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dropcheck Posted May 31, 2017 Share Posted May 31, 2017 Hopefully you are aware of the purchase of Copper Connection by ExpressPCB. I would be cautious of updating your ExpressPCB software for fear of losing the compatibility to your current version of the gerber conversion software and vise versa. Maybe they will continue the conversion feature, but it's not listed in the major features of Copper Connection on their website. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted May 31, 2017 Author Share Posted May 31, 2017 (edited) Hopefully you are aware of the purchase of Copper Connection by ExpressPCB. I would be cautious of updating your ExpressPCB software for fear of losing the compatibility to your current version of the gerber conversion software and vise versa. Maybe they will continue the conversion feature, but it's not listed in the major features of Copper Connection on their website. Thanks for the heads up Yes that is why I continue to use an older version of the ExpressPCB software. But I still test each newer version that comes out, and thus far import still works with my Copper Connection software from before it got acquired by ExpressPCB. Actually I really don't know what they are changing in the newer releases of their own software, because as far as I can tell it still looks and works the same, very odd. At any rate my offer still stands that anyone that wishes to use my XEL design files after this Summer's release, to perhaps add to it or take it in another direction, I would be willing to do the Gerber conversion for them. Well assuming they are serious and not just wasting my time, which will be my call. I do believe that Gerber conversion has been disabled in the Copper Connection that ExpressPCB will be providing. I don't blame them, after all they are in the business to sell their own PCB's and not to provide free software so you can take your boards elsewhere. - Michael EDIT: I can also provide the older ExpressPCB software as a download from my site, since that appears to be permissible in the user agreement. Edited May 31, 2017 by mytekcontrols 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bikerbob Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 still waiting with baited breath for the person who steps up and says he will build them? I want one.. just dont want all that soldering. Good work everyone, I hope we find few and easily fixed issues. James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 still waiting with baited breath for the person who steps up and says he will build them? I want one.. just dont want all that soldering. Good work everyone, I hope we find few and easily fixed issues. James If I can get one of these working anyone can 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Firedawg Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 still waiting with baited breath for the person who steps up and says he will build them? I want one.. just dont want all that soldering. Good work everyone, I hope we find few and easily fixed issues. James I know MacRorie has said he is planning to produce these boards, and I plan on assisting with any demands for completed boards if MacRorie needs it. Mike 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 I seriously want to build one of these - it will all come down to funds when the boards are produced, of course. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 The bare board is the cheap part! It definitely helps reduce the cost if you already have extra Atari parts laying around though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 The bare board is the cheap part! It definitely helps reduce the cost if you already have extra Atari parts laying around though. Oh I've got spares of the Atari parts. The U1MB, UAV and some of those discrete components, I don't. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 1, 2017 Author Share Posted June 1, 2017 Oh I've got spares of the Atari parts. The U1MB, UAV and some of those discrete components, I don't. With that existing inventory to draw from, you are probably looking at around $60-70 to build one of these yourself. - Michael 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 With that existing inventory to draw from, you are probably looking at around $60-70 to build one of these yourself. - Michael Well, I priced another U1MB just this week for a 1200XL I recently got running again, and it was $70 and change shipped, at current exchange rates. A UAV is another $25 if Bryan has them whenever people start building. That's pushing $100 on top of the board, power supply, case and discrete components. Not at all unreasonable, but some of us have mortgages and kids in college. Gotta prioritize the hobby money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 1, 2017 Author Share Posted June 1, 2017 (edited) Well, I priced another U1MB just this week for a 1200XL I recently got running again, and it was $70 and change shipped, at current exchange rates. A UAV is another $25 if Bryan has them whenever people start building. That's pushing $100 on top of the board, power supply, case and discrete components. Not at all unreasonable, but some of us have mortgages and kids in college. Gotta prioritize the hobby money. That price I gave is assuming you were to buy everything yourself in a very limited quantity. Obviously if a pre-order is done to up the numbers, the price for the parts comes down. But considering the complexity of this board compared to something like the U1MB, I think even in single quantities the price is actually quite low. Just think back a few years and just the bare PCB alone would have been that price. Remember this is a 4-layer board, whereas most everything that Atari built only had two. Going with 4-layers greatly reduces the noise factor on the power bus, something that creates all kinds of issues if left un-checked. But no sweat off my back if this proves to be too pricey for people, because I don't make anything from this venture anyway - Michael Edited June 1, 2017 by mytekcontrols 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 1, 2017 Share Posted June 1, 2017 Oh, absolutely no question, Michael! I don't dispute anything about the 1088XEL design at all. I have spent too long staring at photos as it is and desperately hope to be able to buy a bare board when they are available more widely. It might take me a month or three to buy up all the ancillary bits and assemble it, but I would certainly love to do it! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 1, 2017 Author Share Posted June 1, 2017 Oh, absolutely no question, Michael! I don't dispute anything about the 1088XEL design at all. I have spent too long staring at photos as it is and desperately hope to be able to buy a bare board when they are available more widely. It might take me a month or three to buy up all the ancillary bits and assemble it, but I would certainly love to do it! I just re-read my previous post and I apologize for it sounding a bit rude (wasn't my intention). Anyway I do indeed understand that even what seems like a small amount of money to some folks, can be a lot to others depending upon the circumstances. Of course as the price of all things Atari keeps going up, my alternative will look more and more attractive. probably the best part being that this is actually a board that a lot of people can build themselves, and it uses a lot of fairly common parts. Well assuming you have a few extra A8's laying around collecting dust, or just happen to have some spare chips. Of course the U1MB is the most expensive single component, but you have to remember that it really brings a lot of power with it. I'm still kicking around the idea of making a simple daughter board with 3 sockets and a dip switch to be used in place of the U1MB when all that it does isn't needed, basically making the XEL more like a stock XL. - Michael 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dropcheck Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 (edited) Heads up! It appears that there has been a mass exodus of pcb houses from AllPCB.com quotes. I was doing some comparison shopping between my normal goto board house ITead and AllPCB.com. I had had some boards done through AllPCB.com and was considering switching completely to them. Mainly I was looking at 140 x 96 mm 4 layer (10ct) board prices and noticed that names I'd been seeing as late as a week ago had disappeared and now the prices had skyrocketed on AllPCB.com quotes. Now I realize that many times the names mean nothing. It's all one big family owned business to say the least, but the price increase was startling. I checked the 170mmX170mm 4 layer (10ct) board prices too and almost had a heart attack. Seems they were much cheaper just a couple of weeks ago. Itead on the other hand still seems to be reporting the same prices in their small batch option. And they are cheaper for the most part. At least so far. Can someone else confirm what I'm seeing on AllPCB.com? Edited June 2, 2017 by Dropcheck 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 2, 2017 Author Share Posted June 2, 2017 (edited) Heads up! It appears that there has been a mass exodus of pcb houses from AllPCB.com quotes. I was doing some comparison shopping between my normal goto board house ITead and AllPCB.com. I had had some boards done through AllPCB.com and was considering switching completely to them. Mainly I was looking at 140 x 96 mm 4 layer (10ct) board prices and noticed that names I'd been seeing as late as a week ago had disappeared and now the prices had skyrocketed on AllPCB.com quotes. Now I realize that many times the names mean nothing. It's all one big family owned business to say the least, but the price increase was startling. I checked the 170mmX170mm 4 layer (10ct) board prices too and almost had a heart attack. Seems they were much cheaper just a couple of weeks ago. Itead on the other hand still seems to be reporting the same prices in their small batch option. And they are cheaper for the most part. At least so far. Can someone else confirm what I'm seeing on AllPCB.com? You are absolutely right about the changes over at ALLPCB (thanks for the alert by the way ). With HQPCB gone from their manufacturer list, so went a high quality cheap option. So I started looking around today and found a site called EasyEDA who not only manufacture PCB's for very reasonable cost, but also offer a high quality online design tool for doing schematic capture and PCB layout (reviewed at HACKADAY). I found them via PCBshopper using their PCB Price Calculator, after which it lists a bunch of PCB makers including iTead in order from cheapest to most expensive based on your particular board characteristics that you entered. So seeing EasyEDA at the top of the list (meaning the least expensive), I then used the provided link to go to their site and entered my details into EasyEDA's price calculator getting the following results for 4 different quantities that I selected... Basically this is not much different than the last order I did through ALLPCB when HQPCB was still with them. And these reviews at EEVblog for EasyEDA's PCB manufacturing abilities look encouraging. So I think I will give them a try on the next PCB run that I do. I also checked out the possibility of using HQPCB directly, but they are not geared towards English speaking customers, and using Google translate was not a good option. Plus dealing with the money situation would likely not be easy. So all is not lost by ALLPCB's recent change, since it got me looking around for a substitute and led me to find EasyEDA. As an additional bonus, their free on-line design tools do look intriguing, although for my current project this isn't an option I will pursue. But for someone just wanting to try their own hand at PCB design it could be a good way to go. Thanks for the heads up Dropcheck - Michael Edited June 2, 2017 by mytekcontrols 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mutterminder Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 This project is looking better all the time. I would like to get a PCB when you make them available. I have a few spare 800XL's. The other parts I can gather gradually. If I could get a kit of the sockets, connectors, caps, and resistors that would be great too. Maybe you can't do it, but somebody else here has and urge to do it? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 3, 2017 Author Share Posted June 3, 2017 (edited) This project is looking better all the time. I would like to get a PCB when you make them available. I have a few spare 800XL's. The other parts I can gather gradually. If I could get a kit of the sockets, connectors, caps, and resistors that would be great too. Maybe you can't do it, but somebody else here has and urge to do it? It won't be me, but there is something in the works by someone else. If you go back to the early part of this topic you'll see where I mention that this is a personal project not slated for production. In the beginning it really was just an exercise to see what approach could be taken to creating such a thing, and I didn't really think I could pull off something of this magnitude. But that soon changed, and the XEL took on a life of it's own resulting in the first run of prototype boards to be built. "Life will find a way" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiVVzxoPTtg It's now on the verge of being released into the wild, and I know at least two people have expressed an interest in doing a group buy for the bare PCB's. And there has also been talk by one individual of maybe taking it beyond that, and do it either as a kit or possibly fully assembled. It'll be very interesting to see where this all goes. - Michael Edited June 3, 2017 by mytekcontrols 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+S.D.W. Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 So how about letting us do a a bare PCB buy right now? I'd be in for at least two... I personally don't need to wait for a kit to be put together or somebody else to build it for me. Let's get this show on the road. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Van Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 So how about letting us do a a bare PCB buy right now? I'd be in for at least two... I personally don't need to wait for a kit to be put together or somebody else to build it for me. Let's get this show on the road. It's good seeing this level of support This is really a great redesign of one of the best 8 bit machines, so many great features added to the core Atari. The time is getting near but lets not rush too much. Even in the last few weeks, improvements have been added as the beta boards are being qualified. It's a feedback process that improves the design so when it is released it will be a trouble free kitchen table build. To be sure, there is a member that has plans to do a run. But once the design is released there are no restrictions, so anyone is free to do a run of boards and I would be open to supporting a group buy of bare boards. Except that I wouldn't want to interfere with another member's plans for production, as the higher the volume the better the price for everyone. Hang in there, it IS happening and it will be SOON Yogi 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mytek Posted June 3, 2017 Author Share Posted June 3, 2017 It's good seeing this level of support This is really a great redesign of one of the best 8 bit machines, so many great features added to the core Atari. The time is getting near but lets not rush too much. Even in the last few weeks, improvements have been added as the beta boards are being qualified. It's a feedback process that improves the design so when it is released it will be a trouble free kitchen table build. To be sure, there is a member that has plans to do a run. But once the design is released there are no restrictions, so anyone is free to do a run of boards and I would be open to supporting a group buy of bare boards. Except that I wouldn't want to interfere with another member's plans for production, as the higher the volume the better the price for everyone. Hang in there, it IS happening and it will be SOON Yogi I totally agree - Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariNerd Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 I keep eye-balling the Akasa cases (same company I mistakenly posted an Intel NUC case from earlier) , because the ribbed styling vaguely reminds me the detailing on the XE and 16 - bit lines. They have an upcoming OEM case in the thin Mini - ITX form-factor, that looks sort of like the one Michael mocked up for his 1088XEGS concept a year or so ago. Two Serial ports in back for sticks,etc. https://www.akasa.co.uk/update.php?tpl=product/product.detail.tpl&no=181&type=Fanless%20Chassis&type_sub=Fanless%20OEM&model=A-ITC005-M1B# Might be nice to create a custom front-panel - maybe include a slot in the front for an SDrive or a Side/IDE. And cut out a cart port up top, of course. Would look pretty good in XE/ST grey, too. I'm tempted to try my hand at rigging something up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted June 7, 2017 Share Posted June 7, 2017 I keep eye-balling the Akasa cases (same company I mistakenly posted an Intel NUC case from earlier) , because the ribbed styling vaguely reminds me the detailing on the XE and 16 - bit lines. They have an upcoming OEM case in the thin Mini - ITX form-factor, that looks sort of like the one Michael mocked up for his 1088XEGS concept a year or so ago. Two Serial ports in back for sticks,etc. https://www.akasa.co.uk/update.php?tpl=product/product.detail.tpl&no=181&type=Fanless%20Chassis&type_sub=Fanless%20OEM&model=A-ITC005-M1B# Might be nice to create a custom front-panel - maybe include a slot in the front for an SDrive or a Side/IDE. And cut out a cart port up top, of course. Would look pretty good in XE/ST grey, too. I'm tempted to try my hand at rigging something up. Oh man - that is a bad ass case! I settled on the Realan H80 for my 1088XEL. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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