Hardware is Hard: Hardware Designer Panel

Dave Park and friends have a light-hearted panel discussion about the difficulties of making new hardware for old machines. Guests on the panel are June Tate-Gans, Kevin Williams, Carlos "Guru" Santiago, Adrian Black, and Paul Schreiber.
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[@obsoletegeek]

Paul is royalty on that stage

[@SonicBoone56]

Yep

[@vcv6560]

"Every penny is a Ferrari." Love it! The point about board design (I'm an EE) is so true; board layout was so expensive and almost nobody had CAD tools had to be done by hand everything on consumer systems was cost challenged. Great talk.

[@justovision]

Good information and shared experience. Ben Eater is building computers and graphic cards on breadboards. There's a huge spectrum of what your goals might be.

[@paulschreiber9384]

Not the "use case" for this panel, which is taking existing 40-50yr old HW and trying to plug modern stuff into it

[@bmartin427]

Very interesting discussion, but I feel bad for Adrian and June.

[@Daveyk021]

Thinking the same thing - lol

[@psergiu]

They've learned a lot.

[@tspawn35]

Yeah, The last question was a softball for Adrian. He was wanting to speak and never got to.

[@sryt76]

Yeah, the moderator was not doing their job, even when the question was directly raised for Adrian

[@Daveyk021]

@@tspawn35 He did design and make his own memory/ram board for the old PC's (I have some ready to build if I ever get around to it - lol). He is amazing at analyzing existing designs and figuring out how to do the repair. It just wasn't the talk for him to be at.

[@tschak909]

in Hardware Design, there are:
1. Lies
2. Damned Lies
3. DATA SHEETS.

[@tym0tym]

Paul is awesome

[@TimsRetroCorner]

So one of the points that came across, which got a bunch of nods but no real explanation or expansion was, "don't use a Mean Well". There are lots of use cases when we want to replace the old 'brick' or massive 3 tonne internal transformer/heater with something modern, compact, reliable, cool, and lightweight. And Mean Wells often fill that role. So why not use one? What alternatives would the panel suggest? Or does the caution only apply to new-build hardware that requires its own PSU?

[@moshly64]

I don't think he is talking about those AC bricks, he is talking about the miniature psu modules that can be soldered directly to the PCB.

[@thenormanfair]

I was wondering about that too. Too bad nobody asked him about that, at least on video.

[@TimsRetroCorner]

​@@moshly64 You mean like a 7805 replacement? I must admit I wasn't even aware of those!

[@moshly64]

@@TimsRetroCorner I'm not entirely sure, he was talking about the local regulation on the circuit so I believe he meant off the shelf modules (jack of all trades). From what I understand about power supplies,
you need to closely match the psu to the load for best performance. If you use say a 12V 10A supply on a 2A load then you may get excessive noise, poor regulation performance, over voltage on start up etc... stuff like that.

[@MarianoLu]

@@TimsRetroCorneryes he’s talking about those and the dc to dc buck converters not main PSUs

[@Daveyk021]

They all love SMT and doing SMT yourself but no mention of Ball Grid chips yourself.

[@paulschreiber9384]

BGAs on "wide pitch" (1mm or maybe 0.8mm) are OK to route on 4 layer but then the average hobbyist can't solder them.

[@Daveyk021]

@@paulschreiber9384 I watch this one guy on TH-cam replace the Southbridge BGA on PS4s and PS5s all the time. I am amazed at his patience and skills. He has mad skills at BGA with just the simplest equipment.

[@paulschreiber9384]

@@Daveyk021 There are people who can hand-solder 0201 SMT resistors without magnification (I used to work alongside them at BlackBerry). That wasn't my point.

[@Arcadecomponentscom]

Thanks Paul! My storage unit has a lot of EPROMs. :) Funny thing, I brought him a NOS tube of M2732A EPROMs that he picked up at the show.
As for C64 chips, I still have a boneyard from a buyout I did years ago of a closed Commodore repair center in East Texas. Getting low though.