Beginning of very long journey

[fidzen]

Beautiful work!

[mikro]

How are you actually going to do this? I mean 'scanning' the inner PCB layers?

[calimero]

How are you actually going to do this? I mean 'scanning' the inner PCB layers?

I also ask same question...
??

[mpattonm]

Good news I do not really have to xray anything. But no more spoilers.

[bishopco3]

Gerber files can be found at the doc archive for the Falcon(all 6 layers): https://www.dev-docs.org/docs/. This can be used as reference.

[mpattonm]

Yes, gerbers are one of my reference. Unfortunatelly, there is lots of issues within, so half of the traces need to be rechecked.
Dead-end traces, blind vias, unconnected vias,... just to name some of the issues. Plenty of unrouted tracks too in the data. And the routing? Evidence of rushed Falcon development can be observed all across the board. The pattern looks like somebody gave a 3yrs old epileptic kid a pen and let it draw random lines. And the layout...I mean data tracks _and_ VCC line going right below oscilators? Come on, Atari! At lease there is a small patch of GND connected copper in between, but still...
I think I will show some crazy looking routing here time to time.

[mpattonm]

Best practice: place decoupling cap as close to IC _VCC pin as possible. Atari: naaaah, lets take the mofo for ride across the board, drag it at least an inch away!

[mpattonm]

Best practice: keep the tracks as short as possible. Atari: how about some detour!

[mikro]

Are you also going to change the three infamous clock routes into something more reliable? Especially the SDMA path is insanely long, unbuffered and prone to noise and signal reflections from everywhere.

Apart from some clever clock patches there's only one hardware solution I'm aware of which solves this for 100%: the CT2 has a separate wire going from the card directly to SDMA's clock input, completely bypassing the path from the Combel.

[mpattonm]

First I was not going to do any component re-layout, but the more dirt I dig up, the more I am inclined to do a bigger redesign.

[mpattonm]

How about pin swap? Lets give it a little twist.

[shoggoth]

Looks like Atari used some ancient auto-router!

[mpattonm]

Possibly, but then... there is a lot of human like creativity. Such as... Picasso paintings!

[Gaiyan]

Geez! Atari clearly outsourced the routing to a 4-year old with an etch-a-sketch!

Lead Atari Engineer.jpg

Edit: Here you can see her hard at work.

[dhedberg]

Wow. Total lack of QA and inspections of the PCB design and layout.

[mpattonm]

Two down, four to go.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Incredible!

[dhedberg]

Wow. You're fast!

[mpattonm]

Whats shortest path between two points? Appearently it depends on how much crack you have just had.

[calimero]

I just thinking... Atari, Commodore... Sun, HP, SGi... were companies that imagine, develop and manufacture their own hardware and software (some even CPUs)!
Today Gigabyte, Asus or MSI have just to design motherboards within specification. They do not need (or can) to "imagine" anything new.

Is this progress?
Thanks to this "progress" everything today fall in pit of Wintel (even Apple, but thankfully they still push boundaries further over Wintel world).
If you ask Microsoft, without competition, they would still sell Windows XP in 2018.

[arf]

Is this progress?
Thanks to this "progress" everything today fall in pit of Wintel (even Apple, but thankfully they still push boundaries further over Wintel world).
If you ask Microsoft, without competition, they would still sell Windows XP in 2018.

Apple is still selling their "flag-ship" workstation from 2013. Which wasn‘t faster than the one from 2010.

Which is somehow similar to the end of the Atari line.

[mpattonm]

True.

IPC best practice: Place the oscilator as far from any source of possible source of interference as possible, ideally on GND shielded copper spot.
Atari: Lets fck stability. Lets place some few high speed signal tracks right between the legs of an PCB unshilded XO. Not enough? Throw in a massive, hardly regulated, 12V switched mode power supply line in the mix.

[vinz6751]

Great !!

[calimero]

I see that we will get completely new, redesigned Falcon motherboard from mpattonm...

[mpattonm]

Lets say... fixed motherboard with a few essential updates.