User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Mar 30, 2018 8:58 am

Pretty sure a lot of folks here already know about this, but I want to add another link just in case. Over on some other forums a user who goes by 'hese' or hese7' posted photos about a project he'd worked on "for ages" and just recently completed. It's a simply mind boggling project and labor of love where this gentleman, without original schematics, recreated the A4000 motherboard on his own, by hand.

hese:
It took me about 50-75 hours to do the schematics and layout the components on the board. And about 250 hours to do all the routing.
I've shown this work to some folks outside the Amiga community who went to college where they earned engineering degrees, and their jaws hit the floor.

In any case, after news of this amazing work became public, Paul Rezendes (aka Acill) - a well-regarded Amiga tech in the community became inspired and launched a GoFundMe to get new boards made, as hese has said he'll release his files.
As many owners of the Amiga 4000 boards know they contain a battery and several electrolytic capacitors which when age and leak cause severe damage to the motherboard. The goal of this fundraiser is to have the original board converted to schematics and Gerber files. This will allow new boards to be manufactured. The schematics will allow future updates and changes to the design of the board for future enhancements or improvements.
In other words, this is a donation. You won't be getting anything out of this directly except fuzzy warmth in your heart, and the knowledge that you contributed to a worthy cause. But it could build a foundation for future boards to be produced and made for those in the community that want to try and build one. That alone would be a major labor of love by most to do, but still.

I donated last night. I have no intention of buying one of these boards if the project is successful. But I love the idea of this community rising up and coming together to keep major parts (no pun intended) alive. I just love it. <3

At the time of this writing, the goal of $5,000 has nearly been met half-way in 1 day.
lxb43uuy_o.jpg
hese's amazing DIY project

q5uOVdk7_o.jpg
hese's board fully populated (and it works, and WB sees it as an Amiga 4000)

oAnD60Ms_o.jpg
A screenshot of the designed PCB


User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:08 am

UPDATE:
The GoFundMe (at least currently) is not intending on re-using the schematics made by hese, but starting from scratch and apparently intending to be fully open source. This seems to still be developing...

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Mar 30, 2018 12:10 pm

Not being a engineer, I posed the question as to why Acill wouldn't just re-use the work done by hese rather than starting at the beginning.

Someone on Amibay helped explain why:
The revision B board layout is not the same as the Rev CR, besides, hese's board is completely manually routed. With all respect to his work given (no sarcasm intended) which I'm sure is very competent, this process has a greater risk of faults compared to a completely professional production, by a company who does this full time, and operated doing this for many years. They have their own processes and I doubt they'd need any input/help from hese (or from anyone else for that matter).

In any case I see no clash here, the worst can happen is that the community gets TWO new boards (one Rev B and one Rev CR)!
Makes sense. If Acill doesn't attract attention from copyright trolls, I'd hope boards from other models could be made, too.

User avatar
LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:21 am

This is seriously beyond cool... it's registering over 9,000 Fonzies on the Cool-O-Meter! :lol:

I really hope that this project comes to full fruition; I would gladly buy a board (and I would rather have a Rev. B over a CR; the CR board has the CPU included on-board, but it's a 68030 on 4000 CR models as opposed to an '040), as, even if I have my A4000 board fixed, there's always that chance that something horrible could happen to it that I won't be able to repair or revive it.

At least a board like this would allow me to just supply the chips, install it into my case, and be back up and running with not much effort.





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