I am something of a visionary. A person of ideas. I find something like this that I can wrap my head around, see it's potential, and have a strong desire to see succeed, and I start coming up with great ideas. I have many great ideas for add-ons for the C256, but barely know the first thing about implementing, much less bringing those ideas to life. I would like to get with someone who can make PCBs and talk about my ideas, to see if we can be a third party vendor and start making add-ons for this computer when it gets released.
top of page
bottom of page
I use the DIPTRACE starter package for my PCB design. It allows me to make PCBs with 300 print through connections for $75. I played with Eagle before, but if you read the fine print, EAGLE WILL NOT ALLOW COMMERCIAL USE.
https://diptrace.com/
I would love to see a cassette port as well, but I'm OK if its not there.
Something I would love to see, data cassette port. (Yes, you heard that right.) I would go with the connector type used in the Commodore Plus/4. Here's why? Aside from it being able to use the datasette from the Plus/4 (and via an adapter, the C64 datasette), this provides the power lines that are used to power up the SD2IEC module for the Commodore Plus/4 which plugs into the Commodore Serial port (IEC) and the Plus/4 style cassette port. At the least, it would need the power pins but the data lines used would be nice. In addition, the mini-DIN type connectors are a lot easier to source than the cassette port connector used in the Vic-20, C64 and C128. It's a 7-PIN mini-DIN.... ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_7_pin_mini-DIN_connectors,_male_and_female.jpg )
https://www.jameco.com/z/161-2007-Kobiconn-SOCKET-MINI-DIN-FEMALE-7-PIN-R-A-PCB-MOUNT-UNSHIELDED-_2235997.html?CID=GOOG&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIusX5oayo3AIVGbbACh33ewqsEAYYASABEgLRA_D_BwE
Sourcing them from Kobiconn suppliers isn't impossible.
This connector would allow the use of https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/sd2iec-sm.html (SD2IEC Plus/4 compatible version)
USB could be use for power if we still have one of those ports as a powered port but hey.... it's a cool product.
Hey hlide!,
Before I can get something out, I actually have to create the schematics... And yes, it will be open source! ;o)
Thanks for the link!,
S
Stef,
if you're using Eagle, then you might use https://cadlab.io so you can be able to keep an history of your changes on your PCB and schematics (visual changes!) in the same way as GitHub. Go to this link and ponder the interest or not of using it. It sounds as a marvellous tool like GitHub to follow the changes visually, supposedly your work is totally open-source, of course.