[Coco] Proto CoCo

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 28 August 2006 10:09, Mark Marlette wrote:
>Mike,
>
>We bought all of the remaining stock thata certain vendor had from
>Tandy. I still have over 150 cases. :) Always wanted some shorty cases
>but you have to buy ROM packs for that and I HATE to destroy to
>create....
>
>I have Orcad for schematic capture, WinBoard for board layout and
>Specctra for my auto router. Ivex with out of business but I know their
>layout tool so well, I know all the work arounds and can make any part
>I want to.
>
>If I was to make a quick prototype board what would people like on it???
>
>Decode section, wire wrap section to bus signals????
>
>I would go with a solder masked board with gold card edge.
>
>I already have the board outline....the rest is a snap.......
>
That might be a good idea Mark, all us wannabe design engineers would have 
to have a couple of those just to play with if the price was reasonable. 
(there I go again, thinking like a retired old fart on SS, which I am 
these days)  Throw out a price & we'll see if its reasonable.

I especially like the gold card edge as I was the one who got tired of my 
mpi being so intermittent, sawed the 'solder plated' nose off it, and 
sawed the edge off a plated pc card, tacking it in place with a 3% silver 
bearing solder as the bridgeing from the mpi board to that.  Now the only 
intermittent connection is those grounding clips at the end of the side 
port socket.  If I was still using it for the workhorse machine, I expect 
I'd have figured out a way to cannibalize some gold-plated ground plane 
pieces big enough for the ears and did the same thing with the those, & 
maybe even had the clips plated.  I did go so far as ask a jeweler for a 
quote once, but its $ has faded into history now.

But its the shoemakers kids story, I'm not using it daily anymore, which is 
damnation with faint praise for first a full blown big box amiga, and now 
linux on an Athlon XP2800 & a gig of ram in the fastest box & nearly 500Gb 
of drives in 3 boxes.

Actually, such a kit, with gold plated clips and edge/ear  patterns, just 
might be something you could sell to frustrated by bad connections mpi 
users.  I've got another later mpi I'd love to so convert.  There's a 
potential sale of that for every cart the shack ever sold, not just the 
mpi's.  Unforch it will also test the users skill and soldering tools, so 
theres a potential to sell the conversion being done by you since not all 
of the users are fluent in hot solder.

>Mark
>Cloud-9
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>Mark
>
>Quoting Mike Pepe <lamune at doki-doki.net>:
>> What techniques are you guys who do hardware stuff using for
>> prototyping?
>>
>> There aren't any nice CoCo-cart compatible prototyping boards
>> anymore. I've been wire wrapping my projects, which works, but tends
>> to get tedious.
>>
>> I bought Eagle a while ago and have yet to do anything useful with it.
>>
>> Just wondering what techniques and/or products are out there to help.
>> I know Cloud9 somehow has nice plastic CoCo cart cases.
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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