Building new driver board

ALTO DISK TOOL

The new driver board PCBs arrived and I began soldering components on one of them. Surface mount components are sooooo tiny, it is painfully slow going. When I found my soldering tweezers, which are spring loaded closed, I could hold and maneuver the parts.

Once it was apparently all soldered in place, I had to carefully check every circuit for connectivity and shorts, as well as appropriate resistance. This took the remainder of the day, since I want to be sure that this board is correct.

New driver board, assembled and under checkout

The 40 pin connector on the right attaches to the cable from the Diablo disk drive. The four pin connector at the left top is the power connector to the board. Another 40 pin connector is at the left, but mounted on the underside of the board. This underside connector attaches to the FPGA and its extension board.