[NCLUG] Any roll your own computer jocks on the list?

[John L. Bass]

Hi Mark,

One of the groups I was active in during the 1975-1885 period, we helped each
other with a lot of different personal development projects that frequently
required the shared talents of 3-4 members of the group to get off the ground.

Similar in many ways to this other bay area group:

	http://www.bambi.net/bob/homebrew.html
	http://opencollector.org/history/homebrew/Chapter9.html

We performed a lot of other functions beside just being consultants to each others
projects, including teacher/mentor, and often just a nagging sort of guilt that
helped people stay into their projects long enough to see them done. The group
I was in was about 15 people, ranging from 15-75 - with several father son pairs.

I did several really fun projects while in the group - first was an electronic
Etch-A-Scetch where I fitted the real thing with stepper motors and did some
TRS-80 software to drive/plot it from the printer port. I also did a Z80 based
controller/formatter so I could read/write 800BPI 1/2" 9-track tapes on my
LSI-11/23 unix system at home. I also build a controller for a 30" Calcomp drum
plotter in hopes of dumping the drafting schematics with pencil/ruler/drafting
board.

We also taught each other how to make 2 sided printed circuit boards at home,
and later when we bought Mac512's to use the MacPCB tool from Douglas Electronics
and use their very low cost 2 sided PCB facility with plated thru holes. Many of
us went to on continue to build more complicated projects requiring 4 layer boards.
We would sometime share a proto run, lumping several designs togather to split
the $800 NRE charge for photo tooling and digitizing for drill/router tapes.

It's not expensive to build really fun custom projects when several people pool
resources and share NRE costs. With FPGA's today, almost every design is pretty
much soft - low risk in having proto boards fab'd.

If we have interested people, I could see that it might be fun to share skills
in hardware/software design and maybe teach each other VHDL and other tools
that are core to computer design today.

Your projects below are right on track for such a group!

John

	On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 07:04:07PM -0600, John L. Bass wrote:
	> Hi Guys,
	> 
	> Anybody here into building your own computer type projects, and I'm not talking
	> about assembling commerical components?
	> 
	> But rather, maybe doing a special open hardware project? Special I/O board?
	> A high tech portable/warable project? Cool bust ass server/home machine?

	I have an AMD-300 running in a tiny, little Sun box.  The case is about 
	3.5" tall by 8" wide by 8" deep.  Hacked together myself.  Does that count 
	for anything?  :-)   I've also done the Linux-on-I-Opener hack (but that 
	was someone else's hack that I just followed).  

	I was working on putting a small motherboard into the back of an LCD 
	monitor, so I'd have this whole nifty, little "thin client" thing (a lot 
	like the Linux-on-I-Opener, but with better hardware).  That was a pretty 
	big undertaking - never got it finished.  But I could still pick up right 
	where I left off, if someone else had a mutual interest.

	I've also had a hankering to make a 2U by 10" deep rackmount server - but 
	that wouldn't be anything that you couldn't just buy elsewhere.

	Why do you ask?

	-Mark