gEDA-user: My uEDA-designed open source hardware board works!

[msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Sokolov)]

I've already posted this great news on the relevant project mailing list,
but I thought I'd post it here too:

Almost 5 months ago Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote here:

> Thanks. I had quick a look through, and I must say, the SDSL unit is a
> very impressive project - far more complex than I'd imagined.
>
> Good luck with it, and thanks for the example.

Well, I have some news: I have finally got this board physically built
(sent gerbers to fab, got PCBs back, populated one of them) and it works!
So far I only have the CPU subsystem populated (not the SDSL part yet),
but I still find it amazingly cool that I have an MC68302 microprocessor
system designed by me, it's running at ~16.67 MHz with no extra wait
states, 16-bit SRAM and flash, I've got a working serial console port
and I'm talking to it: my own little M68K debug monitor running on my
very own hardware design!

The following factoids make this success even more amazing:

* It's my very first hardware design, and I chose something of this
  complexity rather than some toy traffic light controller or somesuch.

* Being unhappy with the too-much-GUI-for-me EDA programs like gEDA, I
  wrote my own non-GUI, non-WYSIWYG, totally Makefile-driven EDA system
  (uEDA) to make this board and others in the future, and this board
  project is naturally uEDA's first.  GUI-indoctrinated "professional
  hardware engineer" types may scream in horror at the thought of
  non-GUI, non-WYSIWYG EDA, yet I've designed a board of this complexity
  with it and it works!

* Being a great fan of the UNIX Way of Doing Things (tm), I have used M4
  footprints wherever possible in direct contrast to the strong
  admonitions against their use that are frequently expressed on this
  mailing list.  Having heard comments like "I have had to throw boards
  out because of those awful M4 footprints", I naturally had some
  trepidations when I took the PCB and the box with parts to the
  assembly shop.  But the people there didn't complain about any
  footprint problems, and when I had asked them specifically, the
  assembler told me they were fine.  Oh, and I had completely skipped
  the common step of printing the board on paper and checking the parts
  against it, I had simply crossed my fingers and sent the gerbers to
  the fab. :-)

* Aside from some initial confusion resulting from the assembly shop
  having populated one of the SOICs backwards (I take some blame there
  too for not having inspected it visually before applying 5V),
  everything worked exactly right on the first try!  I had the code for
  the microprocessor ready well before the PCBs arrived, so when I had
  the board assembled, I went straight to the device programmer to burn
  two 29F040s, popped them into the PLCC sockets, applied power and
  guess what, instead of magic smoke coming out there is a working
  interactive monitor prompt on the serial port!

A lot of kudos go to Ineiev too as it's his PCB layout - great job!

MS


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