- Joined
- Jul 9, 2020
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I enjoyed spending the countless hours exploring the nintendo 64 on my last extreme trim attempt. Doing deadbug clock relocations, ramswap and manual ram termination was fun and rewarding... especially when the thing would boot and play games stably. @YveltalGriffin offered much inspiration for these undertakings. Thanks mate, for showing me the way!
Once i tried to trim the mav chip section off the board, the trim went down for the count and stopped booting. I spent a solid day trying to get it back in order with no luck.
I even had designed an RCP breakout board and cart slot connector with FFC connection.
Rather than go through all of that again I figured better to spend that time designing a 3x3-esk custom mobo.
Spent the first day or two working on the symbols and schematic.
Another day or so measuring and dialing in my footprints. (thanks to @Gman for helping me verify my rcp footprint). I discovered the magic of the Kicad Footprint wizard to get things populated in the footprint before fine tuning everything. Stoked about the learning thats been happening. Ended up needing to extend the pads of the footprints for hand soldering purposes...
After dialing in the footprints i got started working on the layout. I was heavily referencing and consulting with gman about his 3x3 design. Thanks for the help and inspiration with that Gunnar @Gman. Legendary homie.
Getting started:
RamBus routing:
Building the termination and clocks:
Pif circuit and VCC regulator:
Bit by bit...Edge cuts with round corners. Mount holes, FFC connectors and breakout pads. Decoupler caps... still need to work on some routing.
After lots of nudging and verifying and checking back and forth from schematic to compendium to board I got to a place where I felt i was very close to a first revision. At this point @YveltalGriffin kindly offered to look it over for a quick design check. He noted how I could work on my routing to not break up the ground plane so much on the back and to avoid so many ground islands in my design... Also how to leverage use of the grid to make drawing fill zones a breeze. I also got some insight into the general layout work flow and how next time I will be able to do it more efficiently. I had to do so much nudging and tweaking because of the order I laid things out. Learning learning learning... Ground plane integrity brooooh. Big thanks to Yveltal for pushing me to learn these skills myself and still lending his knowledge to help me hone the craft more clearly. Epic friend.
I took the time to tuck my routing in as best i could. Its a fun puzzle but i think it turned out way more clean and crisp after taking Yveltal's advice. Anyway here is where I ended up this evening:
After the edits I did another DRC verification and a visual pass over all the systems before building the gerber files and ordering the first print from JLC. I built the BOM and ordered the parts on mouser tonight too! So once i get back from the music tour at the end of june I'll be able to assemble and test this baby out. Super excited to see if it turns out.
I think i am gonna name the project either Tríos or Três. Spanish or portuguese for "Threes" as a play on 3x3. We shall see...
Once i tried to trim the mav chip section off the board, the trim went down for the count and stopped booting. I spent a solid day trying to get it back in order with no luck.
I even had designed an RCP breakout board and cart slot connector with FFC connection.
Rather than go through all of that again I figured better to spend that time designing a 3x3-esk custom mobo.
Spent the first day or two working on the symbols and schematic.
Another day or so measuring and dialing in my footprints. (thanks to @Gman for helping me verify my rcp footprint). I discovered the magic of the Kicad Footprint wizard to get things populated in the footprint before fine tuning everything. Stoked about the learning thats been happening. Ended up needing to extend the pads of the footprints for hand soldering purposes...
After dialing in the footprints i got started working on the layout. I was heavily referencing and consulting with gman about his 3x3 design. Thanks for the help and inspiration with that Gunnar @Gman. Legendary homie.
Getting started:
RamBus routing:
Building the termination and clocks:
Pif circuit and VCC regulator:
Bit by bit...Edge cuts with round corners. Mount holes, FFC connectors and breakout pads. Decoupler caps... still need to work on some routing.
After lots of nudging and verifying and checking back and forth from schematic to compendium to board I got to a place where I felt i was very close to a first revision. At this point @YveltalGriffin kindly offered to look it over for a quick design check. He noted how I could work on my routing to not break up the ground plane so much on the back and to avoid so many ground islands in my design... Also how to leverage use of the grid to make drawing fill zones a breeze. I also got some insight into the general layout work flow and how next time I will be able to do it more efficiently. I had to do so much nudging and tweaking because of the order I laid things out. Learning learning learning... Ground plane integrity brooooh. Big thanks to Yveltal for pushing me to learn these skills myself and still lending his knowledge to help me hone the craft more clearly. Epic friend.
I took the time to tuck my routing in as best i could. Its a fun puzzle but i think it turned out way more clean and crisp after taking Yveltal's advice. Anyway here is where I ended up this evening:
After the edits I did another DRC verification and a visual pass over all the systems before building the gerber files and ordering the first print from JLC. I built the BOM and ordered the parts on mouser tonight too! So once i get back from the music tour at the end of june I'll be able to assemble and test this baby out. Super excited to see if it turns out.
I think i am gonna name the project either Tríos or Três. Spanish or portuguese for "Threes" as a play on 3x3. We shall see...
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