Hi! As a compliment to the N8VEM S-100 backplane project, I am designing an
S-100 card edge connector in KiCAD. As a demonstration I am including it in
an S-100 prototyping board.
Please take a look and thorough review. Any comments, suggestions, and/or
questions are welcome. If there is sufficient interest I may do a small PCB
manufacturing run. I estimate each PCB would be in the $25 range depending
on quantity. The initial run would be primarily for testing purposes so
would be rather small.
I still have 4 of the 8 initial N8VEM S-100 backplane PCBs so if anyone
would like to get involved that would be great. The PCBs are $32 each plus
$2 shipping in the US. The good news is that by waiting you now know the
parts all fit, that it seems to work, the active terminator circuit appears
to be working correctly; the S-100 connectors are installed and seem to have
all the proper voltages. In other words, your risk of a total dud project
has been dramatically reduced.
There are two new files in the N8VEM S-100 wiki; one is the "blank" board
with outline of an S-100 board and the edge connector as a template for
KiCAD and the other is an S-100 prototyping board which uses the template.
I have compared the template against IEEE-696 and also several S-100 boards
in my collection. I have to admit I am a bit disturbed by how much
variation there is in S-100 mechanical tolerances. They all seem to fit but
the variations are quite large between manufacturers, the standard, versions
of PCBs, etc.
http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder¶m=S100
Thanks and have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch