Improving Timex/Sinclair Tape Loading

[mrtinb]

If you make a small board the OSHpark is extremly cheap. If your board is a little bigger PCBshopper will find the cheapest board shipped to your country.

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks Ian!

It all looks good to me! Once I have finished my other project (striping a zeddy to the PCB and rebuilding from scratch) I will start on this one.

I have a load of tapes that won’t load and at least this should help with knowing whether they are beyond redemption or just being a bit difficult.

Lardo

[sirmorris]

If a copy of the original PCB layout is available I don't mind making a couple of boards. If, say, 3 or more people want one then I agree with mrtinb that getting a few manufactured professionally is a great idea.

*edit* I see the pdf in the first post but the layout is only usable with great effort as the scan is wonky. There is a schematic though, and an hour in eagle should see a usable board. I can't spare the time to do this at the moment though, but if anyone has already done this...

[Lardo Boffin]

I would def buy a professional board!

[Dim_75]

Thanks for the info mrtinb, those sites are very interesting , the price seems ok for my (ours ?) small needs.

and yes sirmorris, it could be a good idea, i 'll be on the list too.

The layout needed can be done with the freeware/open source solutions listed on the sites mentionned by mrtinb ? Eagle is one of them ?
If so i can download the application and try to do something with it this week end.
But it will be my first try so i'll put the result here to have your advice, if it can be use or not.
It's never too late to learn new things

[gammaray]

Im in! That is three, get busy! Did I type that out loud?

If a copy of the original PCB layout is available I don't mind making a couple of boards.

By the way, "couple" does sometimes mean few instead of two so I perceive the three of us will be getting a whole board and not two-thirds as the math might imply.

[TMAOne]

I'm gratified that my little "tape cleanup box" may have a litter of cousins soon. I might even spring for one of the circuit boards myself. Since the only "expensive" (not really) component is the silver-mica capacitor, and I have a spare, it would be fun to build one on a proper board.

In 1983 I was poor and there was no eBay, so I ignorantly tried substituting every part I thought might work for the "unattainable" silver-mica capacitor. As you might suspect, nothing worked. So the output to my 2nd "slave" recorder never worked. Finally in recent years I looked up the part again on eBay, and bought a pair of them for a few measly dollars. Now the whole device finally works as advertised.

Ian

[mrtinb]

The layout needed can be done with the freeware/open source solutions listed on the sites mentionned by mrtinb ?

My first PCB was created with Fritzing which has a very low learning curve. My current projects are made with the online tool EasyEDA, so I'm not bound to a particular computer.

Eagle is one of them ?

I have not tried Eagle but I avoided it as I'm a beginner.

[1024MAK]

The layout needed can be done with the freeware/open source solutions listed on the sites mentionned by mrtinb ? Eagle is one of them ?

Eagle is a commercial software package, but a version that can be used can be downloaded and used for free. It's not hard to produce schematics in it. I have not used it to produce a PCB, but plenty of other hobbyists have. The main restriction with the free version, is that the size of the board that can be produced is limited.

KiCad is I believe the most popular open source package

Wikipedia has this comparison page.

Mark

[Dim_75]

Well i tryed to make something with KiCad as my try with Eagle was not productive.

After some hours i was able to do the schematic as it seems to be necessery before makink any drawing of the pcb, but... it still have some errors when i try to validate the schematics.
Here i still have 3 errors (the green arrows) :

3 Debugging errors.JPG (88.17 KiB) Viewed 6852 times

I put the KiCad projet files in the zip :

ZX-CleanLoad.zip

(8.19 KiB) Downloaded 335 times

As it is the first time i use this kind of programm i may have forget something or misunderstood the manual.
Any of you familiar with KiCad can have a look ?