vidpal video ram access board

[Bill Carpenter]

I have just assembled and installed one of the video access boards
created and distributed by Brian Botton [botton at laidbak.i88.isc.com
(Brian D. Botton)].  Executive Summary:  Things went great!  It was a
piece of cake and worked first time.  Thanks for creating this, Brian.

Some folks may be thinking about this and hesitating, so I thought I'd
spend a couple minutes describing the thing from an outsider's point
of view.

1.  Perhaps when you read that the boards were being made by some
friend of Brian's in his basement, you thought, "Oh, great, another
PC board that looks like fingerpaint."  This is definitely not the
case.  This is a good quality board, nice and sturdy, very clean.  The
drill holes are precisely done, and there is a good solder mask over
everything.  In short, don't worry about the board quality.  It's very
good.

2.  Perhaps you are wondering, "can I do this without frying my
machine?"  If you have any reasonable amount of soldering experience,
you should be able to assemble the board with no trouble.  Brian gives
good step-by-step instructions with extra notes for novices.  If
you've never done any soldering, maybe you can prevail on a friend who
has.  It only took me about 15-20 minutes to solder up the whole
thing (trust me ... I've fried many things over the years, so I know
what's hard and what's not :-).

3.  There are only two scary/tricky parts in the whole process.
First, it might be a little tough getting the 68010 CPU out of the
socket.  It's in there pretty tight, and with that large a footprint,
you can get a lot of leverage going.  So, just work it a little at a
time on each end and it will ease out for you.  Ditto when putting
things back together.  Second, you do have to bend one pin out from
the 68010 itself.  You won't have too many chances to do this, so be
careful.  If you're not an electronics person, maybe you can find
someone who is.  (If you screw it up, you can buy 68010's many places,
but it'll still be a bummer.)

Other than that, this is a good quality kit with excellent
instructions.  Assembly is straighforward and doesn't take long.
Thanks again, Brian.

OK, now, bring on that software!!  :-)
--
   Bill Carpenter         att!ho5cad!wjc  or  attmail!bill