@@weirdboyjim it's kinda fun seeing how a single pin here or a swap there leads to some interesting results. (and when you swap things around live and they change)
@@weirdboyjim I'd be keen if you were to make some software videos, too. Perhaps at a high level. I love the magic at the boundary between software/hardware.
@@weirdboyjim On the other hand James, If everything just worked as espected out of the box, it wouldn't be that interesting to follow. The beauty of the design phase is one thing, but the fault finding and optimisation process is another. In my view, it takes a ballance between these parts, to make things interesting to take part in or simply to follow. Personally I find the combination of these processes to be the most instructive and inspiring thing. And Your videos has a good (and addictive, I might add) ballance between these phases 🙂
Your technique of holding the turned pin sockets upright is totally legit.(I would have not hesitated using enough solder actually, to let it flow through the entire plated hole to the other side, there's nothing wrong with that. Apart from you might need slightly hotter iron. But props for the soldering skills :) )
to get the connectors to stay straight when soldering, plug them into male-male header rails, then stick them into one of your spare PCBs (just plug them in without soldering them) and stack the PCB you want to solder on top to make a PCB sandwich. stays put nicely especially if you have both vertical and horizontal connectors on the board as long as your holes aren't way too large.
Thank you James and have nice christmas, these videos are such a pleasure to watch and unwind from hectic day. I do hope you continue doing em even after all this is finished, like it's never gonna be ;D
@@weirdboyjim Conspiracy theories are the most fun! :) But yes, I know, and you've had plenty of things in the videos that were more involved than that.
Seeing the disorganised and unnecessary interconnects be lifted away and out of frame after the new temporary PCB was installed was really quite satisfying. Seeing the VGA portion of the project be that messy must’ve been a massive burden. Also, massive congrats on 20K subs.
As for soldering in headers. Tack one pin in the middle, not caring too much about how straight it is. Hold the board in your offhand, index finger on the connector, melt the solder of the tacked pin. Now you will easily feel when the connector is fully seated and square. Let the tack cool down, then just solder in the rest of the pins. This is of course very hard with two pin connectors.
If you decide to make this into a kit, it'd be nice to have the option to connect the different sections as vertical cards into a backplane, like PC slots. Maybe convertor boards from the existing boards that break out the connections to edge-connectors? Just so people could build smaller cases around it maybe? I guess anyone could really do that part, with the schematics!
My goal here is very much to create a display piece for people to understand the inner workings. You could make it much more dense in the way you describe. I'd probably design larger modules with more functionality on each though.
@@weirdboyjim it is impressive though.. my first and last attempts with auto-routers are 5 years ago, it was so ugly and didn't complete all nets so that I decided to put the brain power into it, with nice power planes and as equal trace length as possible with no strange angles, nice copper fill and so on .. I decided then it is well worth the time to route a board with gray matter instead of silicone and never bothered an auto-router again.. but it is nice to know that it works when in a hurry and aesthetic is not required ;)
I wonder at the end of this ride, to what retro game console your system would be comparable too. I would love to see this come out as a computer kit some day aswell!
I'm looking forwards to writing some games. I'll hopefully be able to make some interesting stuff but I suspect it would take a long time to explore all the possibilities.
@renaissanceman5847 Well, there's not several layers with transparency and mode 7, nor is audio an autonomous second processor, so it's basically a super NES.. but not a SNES.
I thill think it would be easier to hold the pin headers in with ca gel while soldering than faffing around with the boards. or possibly put the pin headers on the excisting modules and lay the backplane on top, that way they wil fit even if they dont look perfect.
