FREE Electronic Components !!! - no, this isn't spam !

[Dave]

Wheeeee - the stuff is now on its way to me

Thanks very much again Lez!

[Martin A]

Aye THANK YOU Les

[Dave]

Well, just to whet your appetite, and so that you can prepare for their arrival - once I send them of course . . . . .

You can see the details of the kits on this page . . .
http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/m ... rtskit.htm

Apart from impressing you with the sheer quantity and quality of the stuff that Lez has made available, the most useful thing on this page are the links to copies of the PDF datasheets that I have downloaded for the ICs, some of them were new to me, if you are unfamiliar with any of them, you can easily download the PDFs from this to save trawling the net yourself.

regards
Dave

(The extra processors for Martin and Mark are not included, they will follow later)

[1024MAK]

Funny reading the page you linked to. Before my mind drifted (and I thought, time to check the MTX forum) I was just comparing the ROM socket pin-out on a QL motherboard to see how easy it would be to "shoehorn" a 128k SRAM chip in it instead of a ROM chip
And what is the 6th item on the list, a 128k SRAM chip (32 pin DIL)!
Not that the one that will be supplied is earmarked (have another 128k SRAM chip for the QL already).
But my brain works in mysterious ways... You never know what ideas may float to the surface

Mark

[1024MAK]

Oh, Dave, the Zilog Z84Cxxx parts are CMOS. You have put NMOS next to them.

Making nice lists with easy to click to data sheets, supplies of gubbins, I'm gonna have to keep playing with, sorry learning PCB routing software rather than playing, sorry modifying a Joystick (will post details soon).

Mark

[Dave]

tish!

some people are never happy . . . .

off to perform some self-flagelation in penance

[1024MAK]

CMOS - better than NMOS, quicker and lower power

[Dave]

I did wonder if anyone would notice

[Bill B]

This morning I received a package from AB15. After fighting my way through fifty thousand layers of packaging I found the most amazing contents. Not ony a large number of very useful and interesting chips but also all the necessary crystals connectors and switches needed to make them useful.

So much to learn, CPLD, JTAG, the Atmel chips are new to me - hours (years) of fun. Lez, I cannot thank you enough for the incredible gift. Thanks also to Dave for the care in dispatch.

For the record, the photo shows the somewhat sad remains of my previous attempt at a home made Z80 computer 20+ years ago. What got built did work, but I never got around to doing much firmware for it, I then got too ambitious. I wanted to add a bitmapped graphics display with glitch free updating. But however many designs I considered, with the components available to me at the time I invariabally ran out of nanoseconds in propogation delay.

So I now need to decide whether to resurect my old project, or start again with the new chips from Lez.

Photo of previous Z80 computer

HMC.jpg (167.33 KiB) Viewed 8873 times

[Dave]

For anyone else eagerly scanning the post . . . .

You'll just have to be a little more patient and wait until Monday

Bill got "Priority Shipping"
- his kit went on Friday, the rest of them went this morning, again, First Class.

The ones in the UK should arrive on Monday, it will be a few days longer getting to Spain though

regards
Dave