Just received a package via Hong Kong Post

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Just received a package via Hong Kong Post

From Newton Mike...

 

 

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Looks really good ...

Looks really good ...  But only one? :-)

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This is my 2nd one.  First

This is my 2nd one.  First one the board is assembled and I'm working on putting the other parts together.

 

 

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That looks beautiful!! My

That looks beautiful!! My build is on an all-gold board which isn't as nice.

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jmmh wrote:That looks
jmmh wrote:

That looks beautiful!! My build is on an all-gold board which isn't as nice.

 

This one came from Newton Mike on here, and I think his board right now is about the best one you can get.

 

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Parts from Mouser (except the

Parts from Mouser (except the power receptable/switch/fuse assembly from Amazon).

 

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Uncle Bernie's famous Apple-1

Uncle Bernie's famous Apple-1 IC Kit:

 

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Newton Mike's Datanetics

Newton Mike's Datanetics Cherry-MX keyboard:

 

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Loads of machined pin DIP

Loads of machined pin DIP sockets...  40, 24, 16, 14 & 8...

 

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About cheap ENIG 'golden' boards and the tin plated other choice

In post #4, jmmh wrote:

 

"That looks beautiful!! My build is on an all-gold board which isn't as nice."

 

Uncle Bernie comments:

 

Don't whine about these "golden boards" ! You made a choice for one of them and (hopefully) paid a much lower price than for the Newton boards.

 

When the "Open Source" Gerbers came out of Russia (thanks, Misha !) you essentially had two choices to use them:

 

A board made by JLCPCB with everything being tin plated, including the 44 pin edge connector, which basically renders this edge connector unusable, as tin is a very lousy material for sliding contacts.

 

or

 

A board made by JLCPCB with their ENIG process option, where everything is plated with a thin layer of gold. You can specify if you want few atom layers or fewer. This ain't the industry standard recipe for nickel / gold plated edge connectors, which is a manual process, and much more expensive. ENIG was originally meant as a corrosion protection to keep SMD PCBs solderable in storage. Despite there are only few atom layers of gold, ENIG makes OK gold fingers for sliding contacts.

 

Just to give you a number, the tin PCB from JLCPCB costs about $25, and the ENIG one $28 each, if you choose the least amount of gold. You milage may vary depending on the number of PCBs made and the shipping costs chosen.

 

There have been greedy sellers on Ebay who sold these ENIG boards pretending that they have "real" gold fingers. Well it depends what "real" means. I think calling ENIG "real gold fingers" is a fraud.

 

There were no other options for a while. When Mike "Newton" restarted the Newton PCBs you could again get real gold fingers with the full industrial spec. But at a price. "retroplace" also has PCBs with real gold fingers which are based on the improved Gerbers made by Logan Greer from the Russian ones (Logan massaged them a little for more authentic looks compared to the originals).

 

As far as I am concerned I have build several Apple-1 using the ENIG PCBs and under artificial light conditions it's hard to tell them from the tin plated ones. For people on a budget they are still the best choice, I think. And thanks to the gold plating they won't corrode as quickly as the tin plated ones (or the originals).

 

(Let go any hope that corrosion will turn your clone into something you could sell as an original).

 

Comments invited !

 

- Uncle Bernie

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Newton Mike's PCBs are indeed

Newton Mike's PCBs are indeed 2x what the ones sell for on eBay.  But I think it is worth the price.  Maybe not to everyone.  I might consider some of the other ones if I knew who they are coming from.  But I have no idea who the sellers in Florida or Munich or the others on eBay are.  I've done business with Newton Mike before so I trust him more.

 

 

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Some advice for builders shopping for Apple-1 PCBs

In post #11, softwarejanitor wrote:

 

"I have no idea who the sellers in Florida or Munich or the others on eBay are."

 

Uncle Bernie comments:

 

Have no fear. The seller for this board:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/295113975410

 

is Armin Hierstetter who gained fame for producing these fine reproductions of  the Apple-1 manuals (real print from computer typesetting !) and he then proceeded to adopt my "100 wave-soldered Apple-1" project which I could not bring to fruition mself due to the pandemic disrupting all my elaborate plans ... so I decided to sell off my IC stock I had bought for this project as my - now famous - 100% tested and burned-in IC kits.

 

These PCBs are from the same lot he uses for the much more expensive "wave soldered" Apple-1 he sells. So they work !

 

I can't vouch for any other sellers of Apple-1 PCBs seen on Ebay - except for Newton Mike, newton-computer, see here:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255683262154

 

The lesser known sellers of Apple-1 PCBs on Ebay come and go. It seems that most are hobbyists who have taken the Open-Source Gerbers to order a small production run from JLCPCB and then they sell the excess which they don't need. Sure, JLCPCB will gladly make you just one prototype, if you order that, but this is not economical. So people are inclined to order more to get the price per PCB down, which makes sense. All these PCBs should work, being based on the same Gerbers, but some rookies get the recipe they order wrong, and then silkscreen over copper disappears ... this can be seen in the power supply section, the diode symbols sit on metal, with no solder mask there. The next issue is packing ... shipping these large PCBs is a major undertaking and it's tedious and expensive to pack them well.

 

As far as I can tell it seems that most of the fraudster's / hucksters who sold cheap JLCPCB based Apple-1 PCBs on Ebay at about the same prices like Newton Mike's or Armin's more elaborate and valuable PCBs have disappeared since these higher quality and better offers became available again. Still, as always: "Buyer beware !".

 

- Uncle Bernie

 

 

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Thanks for the info on the

Thanks for the info on the other sellers.  That Munich seller isn't really that much cheaper than Newton Mike, but it is nice for some people to have an alternative I guess.  As for me, I will probably call it good once I finish the two I am building.  The ones I worry more about are the ones from Florida, Canada, California, etc. which are in the $40-ish range.  Not sure what you'll get from them.  I suspect you are probably right -- left overs from someone's JLCPCB order.

 

 

 

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