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

[asomers@xxxxxxxxx]

"Horror" is the correct description of my first thought.  EDA is such
an inherently graphical task, a gui seems natural.  But you apparently
did without, so maybe I can too?  Is uEDA public yet?  I'd like to
check it out.  If you could write a non-gui PCB layout tool, I'd be
even more impressed.
-Alan

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Michael Sokolov
<msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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