wjc@hoswjc.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) (10/15/89)
I have just assembled and installed one of the video access boards created and distributed by Brian Botton [botton@laidbak.i88.isc.com (Brian D. Botton)]. Executive Summary: Things went great! It was a piece of cake and worked first time. Thanks for creating this, Brian. Some folks may be thinking about this and hesitating, so I thought I'd spend a couple minutes describing the thing from an outsider's point of view. 1. Perhaps when you read that the boards were being made by some friend of Brian's in his basement, you thought, "Oh, great, another PC board that looks like fingerpaint." This is definitely not the case. This is a good quality board, nice and sturdy, very clean. The drill holes are precisely done, and there is a good solder mask over everything. In short, don't worry about the board quality. It's very good. 2. Perhaps you are wondering, "can I do this without frying my machine?" If you have any reasonable amount of soldering experience, you should be able to assemble the board with no trouble. Brian gives good step-by-step instructions with extra notes for novices. If you've never done any soldering, maybe you can prevail on a friend who has. It only took me about 15-20 minutes to solder up the whole thing (trust me ... I've fried many things over the years, so I know what's hard and what's not :-). 3. There are only two scary/tricky parts in the whole process. First, it might be a little tough getting the 68010 CPU out of the socket. It's in there pretty tight, and with that large a footprint, you can get a lot of leverage going. So, just work it a little at a time on each end and it will ease out for you. Ditto when putting things back together. Second, you do have to bend one pin out from the 68010 itself. You won't have too many chances to do this, so be careful. If you're not an electronics person, maybe you can find someone who is. (If you screw it up, you can buy 68010's many places, but it'll still be a bummer.) Other than that, this is a good quality kit with excellent instructions. Assembly is straighforward and doesn't take long. Thanks again, Brian. OK, now, bring on that software!! :-) -- Bill Carpenter att!ho5cad!wjc or attmail!bill