snafles

In my experience, it may be jumping the gun to say the part is no longer in short supply because one distributor has an expected delivery date. What you dont see is that they may have backorders of a hundred thousand or so parts, which means that the inventory is already spoken for. That happens all the time with select AVR microcontrollers, at least thats where I have noticed it. Also, one off orders arent generally given preference at larger distributors because it would mean cutting a reel, or breaking a box, or something so that they end up with less than a full unit. That all said, I do hope the drought is easing up or a suitable replacement is found.

Someone may want to try and get in touch with Chris Wilkson (cwilkson) who made the CyberTech board. He may be willing to release that design or at the very least add very useful knowledge to the project. The CyberTech mod seems to be one of the better ones.

I will be happy to give away the gerber files and parts list for my solderless board. Gerber files are whats needed for a fabricator to make your board. For $100 at Gold Phoenix PCB you could have 50 or so boards printed up. I would like to wait until I actually solder up the board and make sure it works before I do release it though. Unfortunately this is the worst time ever to order anything from China because its their new year and that means at least two weeks of delay. So I am sitting waiting patiently for my boards. This board could also be used as a solder version without much trouble. But I think its all useless unless someone comes up with a different design. No matter who makes the mods, they will run into the same issue, the FMS6406/FMS6400/FMS6410 chips are very scarce. The previous picture I posted wasnt the finished version, I was too lazy to take a new snapshot then. This is the finished design.

Might be a good idea to wait until the design is proven before ordering. That picture of the PCB is just a render the Altium software made of the board. I dont actually have one yet. Its being fabricated right now, usually with a two week lead time at BatchPCB. I will let know how it turns out.

To order just one it costs $50 to get it to my door. The price per board would drop dramatically depending on how many are ordered. The next quantity level step might be ordering a whole panel. A panel is about 12"x 18", but only 10" x 16" of that is usable. You could fit 8 boards on that and it would cost about $100 give or take $10, which is around $12.50 each. Beyond that it get way cheaper per board, but you need to order lots more.

Very cool, did you design that yourself? Yea, I used my 6 switch circuit board and a few sets of online schematics as a reference. I wasnt designing for a portable so it has normal joystick ports, six normal slide switches, and stereo audio with composite out. Its using Longhorn's A/V mod. I have one on order at BatchPCB.

I figured I would take a shot at making one of these, its 3.5" x 4.4".

I haven't been at this for 20 years, but I have seen regulators go under voltage a hand full of times. For people that don't understand how a quartz crystal works, here's a simple explanation ...

The design software is Altium Desinger. But for something like this, Eagle works just a well. As far as manufacturing, BatchPCB.com is where this one went. I wanted two boards, you cant beat their price for small one-offs. $10 setup fee then $2.50 per sqin for as much or as little as you want. For tiny stuff you wont find cheaper, for large/high quantity, just about anyone else is cheaper.

I decided to make my own LE Mod. This one is in the style of the 8bit Domain mods. You remove the TIA then place it on a socket on the board. The board is then placed on the VCS where the TIA was originally. No soldering required. I just sent it out to the board house, sure hope I didnt screw anything up.

Looks like I have one of the misses. Works without the mod, wont work with it. Oh well. Thanks for the help.

I just found an old 6 switch 8bitdomain video mod, but I cant find Mike's installation guides. Any chance anyone here has a copy of the PDF? Thank you

Just found www.pcb4u.com. They will do a 2 layer with mask and silkscreen, 20sqin for $10 a board, you must buy 5 of them though. No setup charge. Go to the 5 piece deal on the front page. This is the best deal I have ever seen, its a little more than 1 barebonespbc boards, but you get 5 of them and mask and silkcreen.

Its hard to beat www.barebonespcb.com for quick and dirty prototype boards. The problem I have is that no mask sucks for surface mount.