CoCo Xpndr1 (was: RE: Keep or assemble???

Rumor has it that David Woyciesjes may have mentioned these words: [snippage, fore and aft...] I don't necessarily disagree with you, but the "reproducability" would be decreased once the kit is built... i.e. you can't [easily] scan the boards, or re-design them in AutoCad, etc... With this in mind, I was digging thru an old box of CoCo stuff I have and I came across (2) Xpndr1 expansion cards, 1 of which is virgin. A quick search of Google shows nothing about them... I've started re-designing the card in AutoCad (as if I didn't have *enough* projects ;-) with improvements. Some are minor, like putting the signal names on the top of the card instead of the bottom (so it's easier to see the signal names when I attach a small breadboard to the top of the card...) some are major (or going to be) like the extra room for standoffs so it'll be self-supporting, and also connector ports for both a "PC hard drive power port" and a "PC floppy drive power port" so you can power the thing from any PC power supply *or* an FD-50x power supply. I also plan on having one that buffers all of the data, address & major signal lines on the board, so that experimenting might be easier without blowing the entire CoCo bus. Which leads to my questions: A) Anybody know anything about the company that marketed these, as I don't want to intentionally break any copyright laws; but with no info on the internet & the extreme possibility of the company no longer existing, does anyone think I'll be in trouble with the law WRT copyright laws? I'm mainly just using the original as a pattern for (1) the signal names & pinouts, and (2) the dimensions of the connectors & pins (I didn't have anything else that had the ground pegs on either side of the connector). B) I can prolly find this out for myself, but there are many others here better than me on the hardware side of things: What would be some of the better [a.k.a more useful] buffer chips I could use to buffer the address & data busses? C) Are there any *real* problems with powering the card from a separate power supply? I'm assuming I need to tie the grounds together, but I wouldn't want the +5 / +12 / -12 volt rails tied at all -- they should be separate, right? [[no, I really don't feel like dissecting my MPI just yet... altho I think it's the *only* piece of computer equipment I've never taken apart! ]] Should I check the voltage levels of the power supply & the CoCo to see how close they are, or as long as they're both within TTL levels is it OK? I'm mainly worried about the PC supply being of a higher voltage than the CoCo, if that'll cause problems. =-=-=-=- The designs (when they get closer to completion) I will have on my website for free, but if I make several cards and someone else is dumb^H^H^H^H bold enough to purchase one I would sell them for a small profit... Anywho, thanks for listening, and double-thanks for any advice that others might be willing to offer... ;-) Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig. If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.