exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

@Steve Kind of for fun yes, but it is my girlfriend's laptop, she is using a MacBook at the moment... She wasn't that bothered about about me fixing it, but it just seemed a shame because there was nothing really wrong with it, other than a couple keys not working. The cost of parts plus more RAM was about £10 overall... She does not have a lot of money , so £10 is a lot to her.

Later I purchased a faulty laptop of the same model,Just as a project to give me a break from shoving stuff in pink bags all day...Which ironically I ended up fixing But the case was all smashed up on that one... In any case the screen was better than the one in my girlfriends, I think the LCD had been damaged at some point, so I swapped that over along with the CPU..I have a spare motherboard and the old LCD incase it is needed in the future now..

...And I might have accidentally purchased another one yesterday

[exxos]

JLC messed up the ST2VGA assembly

For some bizarre reason they decided to put all the didoes in backwards, so now I gotta turn them all around

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[exxos]

First update of something since forever...

Started building up one of the new batch of Falcon RTC modules.. Mostly just trying out some new solder paste which is made in the UK..

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Also designed and printed out a chip alignment tool but don't know if I will use this or not yet.

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[exxos]

The new modules are low profile.. In theory even with a socket they should still be lower profile than the original...

Main be not be apparent on the images, but the new right hand side module is actually plugged into a socket...

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I would also like to point out again that I only buy genuine chips not cheap crap from China....

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[exxos]

Wasn't really sure where to post this.. but I will have some more STFM/STE cases for sale, BUT I just don't have time to sell things individually.. Plus packing stuff isn't good for my fingers, and I don't want the hassle of working out shipping costs, emailing people back and forth for ages, hunting for boxes to pack them in, ordering and storing rolls of bubble wrap.. Id rather sell the lot in one go even if I lose out on some money.

I have talked to @atarifreakz and I will be sending him all the cases I have , probably after xmas once all the H5's have shipped.. In part as the packing boxes are in a huge box, which I can re-use to ship cases all in one go, but also I need to strip all the machines as well.. Which I won't have time to do until after xmas anyway.

[exxos]

New low profile RTC chips with socket are within gnats knacker of the originals now!

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[exxos]

I made plans today to build up the new TOS206 decoder boards, with the intention of actually doing the 16MHz booster parts as well.. Though the original board I got was version 1.0 which a small number of people have now ( incidentally I found one of these boards and put it in my store earlier) and I got the updated boards made which was version 1.1 ( which I just found) then looking on my PC actually have version 1.3 I decided to make some last-minute changes on the board and now it is version 1.4

I have added the parts into it, but JL see do not stock the 1502 but at least I can get a few of these boards ready with exception of the PLD... It says me a huge amount of time looking and ordering parts and then having to assemble them myself. I am not going to add these boards onto my current order otherwise it will put back all the outstanding orders another week or more.

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[exxos]

These arrived today

Huge trays of DRAM for the STE simms.. brand new factory sealed.. and a stack of brand new MPF920 drives.

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Back to the hunt for cool stuff....

[exxos]

Put myself into debt for the next year or three and purchased one of these...

This is sort of like a 3-D printer, but instead of dispensing filament, it dispenses solder paste. There is not really much information about this online but believe me I have been emailing the manufacturer back-and-forth for some time now.

I have been using stencils for a while, but the metal ones always seem to thick and put down too much paste, and then I have to order a transparent film type stencil from the UK to make the pads smaller.

Back around this post https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 010#p45372 I was building my own jig for using stencils a lot easier. But part of the problem is that it ends up with smudging underneath the stencil which means I really would have to clean it between every application. Also it really needs to be done in one go.. Sometimes it misses pads and you have to go over them again, which just aggravates the smudging problem.. Then there is issues of solder managing to stay stuck in the stencil as opposed to the PCB so it ends up with pads with little solder on which just causes problems later.. Either way I basically end up having to re-solder various pins manually

But even if I could develop a totally great stencil method, either by buying a proper jig or whatever, is still messing around with stencils and again, my hands are not up to doing a lot of this fiddly work any more.. I really have no choice but to find some other method of doing this job. I need something which is as automated as possible and reduces the amount of " third-party companies" which I have to deal with because this just constantly adds huge delays.

I have considered getting stuff made that the factory.. JLC do some assembly work which saves a lot of time, but they do not stock all the parts... How I used to operate was sending piles of parts over to China which cost a fortune, have them assemble the boards and then have all the shipping expenses back again... Was just so much messing about involved and expense.. I have even considered getting stuff assembled in the UK, but generally anything under 100 quantity gets incredibly expensive.. And I still have to faffing around posting stuff back and forward and explaining how to build stuff etc overall it would just be quicker and easier if I could just assemble stuff myself..

Take for example the STE Simms which I produce, it literally takes all day just to paste 40 simms and put parts on. And that only equates to 10 sets which does not keep them in stock for very long... Mix in the multiple all the projects which need assembly as well..

So this solder paste printer, is basically the only one on the market which will do what I want.. There are some really odd China things out there but I just wanted to go with a specialised company who just deals with that one product and who will support it properly. With this printer I can just throw the Gerber files into it and basically just press print.

I think in a way the printer will maybe be slower than mass pasting stuff with this stencil.. But this will basically save a entire day of not having to paste stuff even if it does actually take two days to do the same work.. Even so, I hope the accuracy of the paste printing will solve a lot of messing about with solder bridges and inadequate solder joints later on.

EDIT:
There's also the problem in that getting the PCB company to assemble some parts, means being able to use a stencil becomes a lot more problematical as the PCB is no longer totally flat because of pre-populated components.

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[sporniket]

Indeed. I was imagining to use a little conic pouch made of paper to do like a pastry chef, but this is a whole new level.