Time for an update, the new boards has arived!

Here’s the final result after receiving the produced boards :

I was so excited that I wasted no time and began to populate the board with all the sockets but realised that the holes for my ZIF sockets was too small.. So I had to put regular sockets instead, not a big deal but I don’t how they will fare since I risk to disconnect the ROMs each time I will need to rewrite them with a new version.

As soon that I began to test the board I discovered some issues.. by going to quickly I forgot to check some details and fried my 80284 clock driver chip like a champ and almost fried my LSB ROM chip by putting it backwards.. Moral of this story, take your time and do one thing at a time !

Fortunatly, I was able to make a 80284 replacement from a GAL chip on a little protoboard.

Here’s the first run I did with the debug card installed to troubleshoot the PPI output :

Finally after a week of troubleshooting, a lot of cutting traces and bodge wires, I was able to make my VFD screen work again thru the PPI :

The next step will be to use this platform to learn more about x86 assembly and begin work on the other ICs like the VIA and interupts controller.

Until next time…

Dom