Category: Uncategorized

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A decided lack of Desktop BlueSCSI Kits

I’m sure you have all noticed that Desktop 50 Pin BlueSCSI kits have been out of stock here for way too long. This is due to some production struggles – the SD card slot in particular.

For some reason this component has been soldered improperly on a substantial number of PCBs, such that the manufacturer thinks everything is OK (automated optical inspection says “here be solder”) but the connection is actually a “cold solder joint” that needs solder rework to function properly.

I’ve mentioned this to the manufacturer in the hopes that they can pay more attention to it, but it won’t be possible to tell whether they changed anything without further orders.

To help with this situation I’m working on a tool that should allow for testing the kit PCB before sending to ensure the SD slot is actually functional. This should prevent the majority of bad slots from being sent out in kits.

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Unintentional 2024 Marchintosh Project

Unintentional is the name of the game here, this project entirely by coincidence happens to be in March so why not talk about it?

What is it? A Macintosh Portable to VGA Adapter, using the RP2040 and Pico Scanvideo library.

I will be working on a PCB for this design soon (presently it’s on a breadboard) and hope to have it available for sale by April. That is, if my spare time permits.

Picture time:

The Converter On A Breadboard With Wires Everywhere
Fish Screensaver on LCD Screen
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Feb 9 Stock Update

Feb 27 Update:

A batch of Desktop 50 Pin boards is on the way now, with parts procurement in progress for more. Estimated availability is March 1st or 2nd.

Feb 15 update:

BlueSCSI Desktop is basically out of stock. I’m working on ordering more of these, the Portable RAM Card, Portable Battery Eliminator, and several other products to keep up with demand.

Original Post:

Hello everyone, thanks to our friends Adrian and Veronica there has been a huge surge in BlueSCSI orders. I’m trying to keep up, and will run out of Desktop style PCBs soon (only 20-ish left).

Thanks for your patience as I restock in my available time.

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2023-11-14 Update

Parts and PCBs for the Mac Portable Battery Eliminator have been ordered (the tiny available stock was the final verification design). And a PCB order is in for what I hope is the last HIDHopper ADB revision before production quantities can be run.

The Switchable Mac Portable RAM card had some production issues last time around that I’m still figuring out. Hopefully it was just bad soldering.

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DefCon 31 Badge Addon Design Files

For those of you that did not know, I attended DefCon this year (and have been for a few years now). It’s quite an experience being surrounded by so many people with a similar mindset on security in general.

This year I decided to make a badge addon, and all the files related to that can be found here. I handed these out at the conference, and didn’t have very many.

It’s a “Heat Index” indicator, which basically calculates the perceived temperature based on the combination of actual temperature and current humidity levels. Then it flashes an LED once per second to indicate those calculated values. Really overall it’s nothing special, but was a fun and challenging design exercise.

It also acts as an STM32F030 breakout board, so you can reprogram it to do something more useful later on. 🙂

This was a good practice activity for another hardware market I want to get into, which will probably take a lot of time and prototyping before anything particular is released.

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Project Updates

BlueSCSI: New revisions of PCBs are in progress, to improve compatibility with LC systems that require a drive sled plus edge connector adapter like the Mac TV. Also updating to allow for more SMD part variety which will help with the parts shortages that keep popping up.

Macintosh Portable Hybrid Module Recreation: This project is waiting for results from testers, but considered ‘done’ otherwise. See the thread on TinkerDifferent here.

Backlit Macintosh Portable Display Flex Cables: The second round of cables has arrived, and are easier to solder than the first round. Thread on TinkerDifferent.

Newton eMate Display Cables: The replacement screen cable has been tested by me and is waiting for one other tester to get back to me before becoming generally available. Thread on TinkerDifferent.

Newton eMate DRAM Upgrade: After a very long hiatus, I have tested a new set of designs and they seem to work ok. On the way to some testers for verification. Thread on TinkerDifferent.

Original LC Series Replacement Power Supply: This project hasn’t gone anywhere since the last update. But I have parts to make a few of each style. Will update once a decision is made.

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New BlueSCSI design incoming – now with transceivers!

I have been experimenting and prototyping with this hardware for months – since late 2021.

I have gone through three hardware revisions.

And now, it’s time to reveal the latest and greatest BlueSCSI so far.

Behold, BlueSCSI with bus transceivers for increased compatibility.

F4 XCVR Desktop Version 1

It looks a little odd, but with the right bracket design it should be compatible with Macs that require a card-edge connector for hard drives.

Currently being benchmarked, with a production run in progress. Available late March.

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Inventory

Due to bad timing on my orders for parts and materials, at least some of the products in my store are going to be running out of stock soon. Orders are in progress for more PCBs and parts, sorry about any lapses. Being a one-person business makes it hard to keep on top of everything all the time.

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Wow

My store was moved to the top of scsi.blue recently because Tom and Eric were out of stock, and wow. I had no idea there would be so much demand. I’m out of stock of just about everything, and more PCBs are in the mail.

Note that the F4 (black PCBs) and F4Lite (green PCBs) branches are faster than stock (blue PCB) bluescsi on 68030 machines and newer, I hope you enjoy the extra speed.

Next week I will be able to restock:
* Mainline / F1 desktop
* F4Lite desktop
* F4Lite PowerBook (PowerBook V4 is practically discontinued, they take a long time to assemble – and F4Lite is faster)
* F4Lite DB25 external
* F4Lite Centronics 50 pin (new product, low quantity will be available until more connectors come in)

Other projects which will be in progress soon:
* Macintosh Backlit Portable screen flex cable replacements
** Currently this is waiting on a hard-PCB to check the through-hole connector footprint
** After verifying the connector footprint, there will be some final checks to do on the design and then I’ll do a prototype run of the actual flex cables. See this thread on Tinker Different if you want to indicate interest in buying a recreation cable: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/recreating-backlit-macintosh-portable-display-flex-cables.567/


* Macintosh Portable (non-backlit) hybrid module recreation with NOS (new old stock) parts
** Found new old stock op-amps, designed a ‘downstream’ tester board for the hybrid
** Very curious to see if this works, because it could revive a lot of portables which are sitting around doing nothing right now
** Also of note: C25 and C26 on the mac portable should not be replaced with ceramic MLCCs! MLCCs are not stable enough in capacitance rating across voltage ranges, so these should be tantalum or electrolytic. Learned this after reverse engineering the hybrid schematic.

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PowerBook BlueSCSI F4Lite Available now

There’s a new product in the shop, PowerBook BlueSCSI version F4Lite. This is my forked version of BlueSCSI, all-green, running on a newer microcontroller module, which is faster than the original all-blue version.

Both kits and fully assembled are available, a first for my PowerBook designs. This is mostly through-hole with the important note that the SCSI connector goes on the *bottom* of the PCB! Kit assembly page is coming soon, so wait for that if you don’t want to refer to the product pictures alone.

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New Products On The Way

On the BlueSCSI front, there are new through-hole designs on the way from the PCB manufacturer, for desktop and powerbook. These have already been verified functional, and these PCBs are for production. They are easier to assemble, with only a few surface mount parts : the microSD slot, and large SMD capacitors.

A new BlueSCSI product line, ‘F4 Lite’, will make its appearance with green PCBs. This style is just as fast as full F4 with the current SCSI protocol implementation, despite being more affordable. Future improvements to the SCSI protocol will make full F4 likely faster. But for now it’s a cheaper solution that runs at the same speed.

Also for the first time, F4 will be available for powerbooks. These designs are through-hole too, and allow disabling termination (by removing active terminator packs) for those that want to try systems other than powerbooks where termination must be fully off.

The eMate 300 RAM/Flash upgrade module will start production when the PCBs arrive.
— Update on the eMate module: either my PCBs are really fiddly or the flash chips I have are all bad. These don’t really seem to want to work, and the PCB design will be updated again later to see if things can be worked out.

The LC MACAA Power Supply Replacement has had one more PCB tweak and is not the easiest to assemble, but will be a good solution for those who want a new power supply for their LC, LC II, LC III, and LC 475.
— Update on MACAA: For the LC there’s actually a nice little medical power supply that does +12, +5, and -5 just like the LC needs. Will be easier and cheaper to just use that instead, and work is being retargeted to that.

The ribbon cable for macintosh portable backlit display upgrade is in production, with one tester ready and waiting to give it a shot.

Another new product (later in the future, design in progress) will be the standard backlit mac portable ribbon cable, as this is a different design – but they tear just as often.

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eMate 300 RAM/Flash Upgrade Success

The eMate 300 RAM/Flash upgrade board (a redesign of the original, using different RAM chips) has passed initial testing. eMate powers on, reports the increased System Memory, and increased Storage. Now I need to do some more testing to verify that things are ok – installing programs, and so on.

The planned pricing for this module is $55, and I expect to produce at least 10.

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Updates on THT BlueSCSI, eMate, and Portable

Non-clone “blue pill” modules are becoming increasingly expensive – would you believe that they actually cost *more* than the faster and newer module for F4 BlueSCSI? This chip shortage is weird, some things are crazy expensive and other newer things haven’t changed much in pricing.

Both through-hole styles of BlueSCSI (mainline and F4) have passed testing successfully. They use only a few surface mount components: The microSD slot and capacitors for the active terminator (large capacitors which ought to be easy to hand solder with a set of tweezers). After a mounting bracket is designed, the mainline bluescsi design will be released on GitHub.

The eMate RAM/Flash expansion is proving to be somewhat tricky. The DRAM side of it (system memory as the Memory Info pane calls it) seems to be working. But the Flash (storage) side is not recognized. I’ve ordered another prototype PCB and set of flash chips for testing.

The Mac Portable project has made a little progress. It looks like the connector footprints are correct, so it’s really a matter of trying a production run to see if they work. This is the recreation of the flex cable for the official backlit screen upgrade for the original mac portable. Pretty tiny target audience, but useful nonetheless.

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Several Projects In Progress

The LC MACAA prototype last mentioned a month ago has required a few more rounds of updates to more thoroughly engineer for the possibility of power supply or regulator chip failure. Latest prototype PCBs are here, and need assembly / testing as usual. A 3D-printed mounting bracket has been designed, and will be improved upon prior to release (it’s kind of ugly).

A new project in the list is a replacement for the eMate 300 RAM and Flash expansion card. These cards are rare and expensive, but only use three reasonably affordable chips – and that makes them the perfect target for reverse engineering. Prototypes are in motion for the original 1 megabyte style plus an upgraded 4 megabyte version. Want your eMate to have as much RAM as a 2100? That’s the goal here. 🙂

I’ve also taken on a reverse engineering task, to redesign the flex cable for a backlit screen upgrade for the Macintosh Portable. That has been designed and I’m looking around for the right connectors now.

All of this while still working on BlueSCSI! The new PowerBook version 4 is up for sale, and it’s 100% surface mount in order to bring the edge connector closer to where you’d find it on an original hard drive. An F4 variant of the PowerBook design is also in progress. And through-hole style mainline BlueSCSI and F4 BlueSCSI prototypes are on the way from the PCB manufacturer (with active termination, of course). Lots going on here.

How many projects do I have in motion? All of them, of course. 🙂

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Tech by Androda, LLC

This site will chronicle my adventures with vintage computers and hardware, electronics in general, and any software which appears along the way. I want to create solutions for vintage computers which don’t require large amounts of configuration or tinkering to make them work.

See the Shop section for:
* Various styles of BlueSCSI™ V2, including Desktop, PowerBook, DB25, and Centronics 50 pin
* The HIDHopper™ Adapter Series, for converting modern USB keyboards and mice to vintage standards
* Newton and eMate Products
* New Old Stock Networking Hardware and Adapters
* A wide variety of products for the Macintosh Portable
* Recreated parts for vintage systems

Ping me with questions at the contact email listed on the About Page.