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Mr.Toast
Roseville, CA

Posted Sun Dec 30, 2018 10:59 am

(Re-posting for Mr. Toast)

Hi all,

I snagged two of the Backoffice Show Pi1541 "hat" kits after a few back and forth exchanges with Mr. Bobby Tay. He's sorta the Commodore curator over in their discord community. Very easy to work with and pretty reasonable prices considering he's shipping the kits out of the UK.

The kits arrived just about after two weeks from when I paid him. The instructions, full color illustrations and BOM sheet with all the components were very well organized!
IMG_20181228_164457.jpg
Silly English Pig-dog! Your father was a hamster. And your mother smelt of Elderberries!

Anyways, had some Friday night free time. Few hours at the workbench and some cleanup:
IMG_20181229_104742.jpg
'ow do you know e's a king? 'e hasn't got shite all over 'im!

This was a good beginners SMT kit with a fairly low part count. If you are thinking of getting your feet wet in SMT work, this is a good warm up. The only part that had me second guessing was the polarity on the SMT LEDs (top right corner). The board isn't well marked for this one instance-although you can make out the ground plane under the solder mask and figure it out. Otherwise, cakewalk. You don't need anything other than some decent eyeballs (mine certainly are augmented) and a decent temperature controlled soldering station. A steady hand helps (DAMN THAT COFFEE I DRANK EARLIER!).

If you want your own, go here to learn about it click here. If it is your cup of (ahem) tea... you'll have to seek out the backoffice discord.

Unfortunately, it will be a few weeks before I can test drive them both to see if we had a successful build as I will be out of town. Hopefully by then, one of the esteemed Mr. Carlsen's PSUs will be in my hands!





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