User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:59 pm

Hi,

Could someone please post some high resolution photos of the Rejuvenator board, ESPECIALLY the underside? I am building one and am trying to figure out the three sockets on the right side of the board, and the pin headers associated with each socket. There are images on Big Book of Amiga hardware, but, by today's standard, they are not hi-res, and there are no pictures of the underside of the board.

Is the BOM on Joe's GitHub going to be updated to reflect all of the missing parts not there? Kind of bummed that I bought $128 in parts from Mouser to build one for both Acill and I, only to find I don't have everything I need to finish the job and will have to pay for shipping yet again.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:39 pm

Prices must have dropped. I spent $150 in parts alone for my board (although I can't remember if that included shipping).

My new Rejuve is currently installed. Would a pic of an original suffice even though there are some small fixes to the new board?

By the way, I needed to install three blank sockets under my board to increase the pin-height as Rejuve2 rides really low. Adding the blanks helped to prevent the Rejuve from making contact with components on the motherboard. But on my OG Rejuve its pins were long enough to reach the motherboard without modification. I don't think we were able to find anything that matched and had to improvise. If I remember correctly, Joe decided to not use the blanks and just made sure there was some sort of gap, even if it was a minimal gap.

I also can't stress enough that the 3D printed guides are a must for installing in a nearly stress-free environment. They also greatly minimize your chance of bending the pins on the motherboard. The guides should be placed on the tops of the mb pins, with just a millimeter or two of gold sticking out.

I was going to reveal this next part later after the team decides testing is officially done, but the boards that will ship in the final release will have a special tribute to Greg in the lower corner. Note the faint binary code which will be in the copper below the silkscreen; the binary spells Greg's Name and his birth/death dates as shown in the silkscreen. The idea was approved by the Tibbs family.
image.jpg
I did try to tell Acill to wait just a bit longer; he contacted me directly asking for files soon after we proved our code worked and I excitedly told the world of our success. I know the temptation is great to get a head start. Sometimes life gets in the way but we can all see the finish line from here.

If you have very specific technical questions, I'd recommend either waiting for the Github to be updated or contacting Mattsoft, as he's built 2 working boards already. I'm using one of them.

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:00 pm

Thank you, Eric.

Some parts I already had on hand, like sockets. I buy them by the 100 at a time, so, prices are lower, and I don't use the machine pin sockets except where absolutely required, like for the stacking you're describing. A good quality dual wipe socket costs 20 cents in quantity, versus a few dollars cost for machine pin sockets. The most expensive parts are the Molex connectors (sadly, the 2pin and 6pin headers are out of stock everywhere until January 2022)and the long pin headers (Samtech brand, 13mm long -- those cost $6 each, and, sadly, I ordered too few of them). I also buy capacitors and resistors in multiples of at least 10, which often times drops the price to less than buying, say, 6 of them versus the quantity breaks at 10 pieces. Resistors and ceramic caps I buy at least 100 at a time to get them down to pennies. I also did not buy anything to populate the video slots, as I don't exactly know what it is used for. It looks the the OG has a secondary PCB that those mount to, at a right angle. I also did not buy the GALS (or PALs, whichever it calls for), as those aren't listed in the Github BOM, so, that too could drive the cost up.

Thank you for telling me about the 3D printed guides for placement. I did not know of their existence.

I did find higher resolution pictures on http://amiga.resource.cx, so I now know how the pins are supposed to be done. I am assuming the fixes that you mentioned are the elimination of the various bodge wire jumpers the original had on the underside to fix some mis-routing?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:35 pm

You're welcome, of course.
I am assuming the fixes that you mentioned are the elimination of the various bodge wire jumpers the original had on the underside to fix some mis-routing?
The spacers really are a life saver.

And yes - that is correct about the bodge wires, etc. I was referring to this part in Joe's Github documentation:
Several design errors on the original Rejuvenator which required bodge wires and trace cuts to rectify have been identified and eliminated in the new design.
If you need additional info Joe is Da Man.

Ideally these details would be articulated in future documentation.





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