old fashioned pcb

[newxito]

I wanted to design an old-fashioned circuit board, 100% through-hole and no HV driver chips. That's the result. I just started to assemble it, still a lot to do. I switched to white, I like the blue metal film resistors on the white background :-)

[Joe Croft]

Nice board, thugh I guess I must be getting old. When I read the description I was thinking a single sided, no silk screen, brown phenolic board with 1/4 wat restors standing vertical. Thank God I am not so old that the board in my mind didn't have transistors.

-joe

[Terry S]

I love the look of a complex, well thought out old school PCB. My only comment would be avoid those cheap IC sockets, spend the extra money and use machined pin sockets. 

Terry

[newxito]

The board is now fully assembled, everything seems to work fine…

Thanks for the recommendation about the sockets.

There are 64 1/4 watt resistors standing vertical :-)

[Steven Donaldson]

Wow!  That looks impressive!

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[J Forbes]

I guess I'm old, too. I think brown phenolic, with the traces drawn with an etch resist pen, and none of the holes are in quite the right places, because it was drilled by hand.

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1972-b/pages/098.jpg

[jb-electronics]

I quite enjoyed these types of PCB when collecting old radios and other pieces of electronics as a kid, it was a lot easier to salvage them for components!

Cheers
Jens

On 9/26/2018 10:50 AM, J Forbes wrote:

I guess I'm old, too. I think brown phenolic, with the traces drawn with an etch resist pen, and none of the holes are in quite the right places, because it was drilled by hand.

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1972-b/pages/098.jpg

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[Jeff Walton]

Fahnenstock spring clips!  I looked at the Radio Shack and saw these listed. It's been 50 years since I thought of these and almost as long since I've seen any... 

Jeff

[Nick Sargeant]

When I first started making my own PCBs, I used to get SRBP boards from a small shop where they sold off-cuts, scored them with a knife and peeled off the unwanted copper. If you lifted up a corner with a knife, it worked. My boards had copper in big rectangular patterns, with holes wherever the drill bit would stop slipping around. When the world started switching over to fibreglass boards, they were much more difficult to peel - i ended up with more fingers bleeding from cut edges, and I changed to a resist pen and ferric chloride. I loved doing curvy traces, just like the PCBs from my favourite HP equipment. I realised FeCl etched all metals, not just copper when I tried to do my first etchings in an aluminium tray .. the FeCl went right through the tray and went on eating into the concrete floor of the garage. (a scene that Ridley Scott stole later for Alien). I blame giving up Chemistry before O level exams at school - an excuse my father didn't accept. 

Brown SRBP boards had a particular odour when you drilled them, or soldered them, and I still refer to those moments when the magic smoke escapes as 'the nasty brown smell'. 

[gregebert]

Pretty amazing how the white soldermask practically hides the plated-thru holes. Best "modern retro PCB"  I've ever seen !!

I'm too far into the dark side with SMT for area and cost reasons to go back to thru-hole-only

[Paul Andrews]

Nice looking clock. I really need to stop getting distracted and build an actual full Nixie clock.

As I came to this late in life, my first PCBs were all surface mount.

For my ITS1A clock, I went full through-hole. The ESP-01 is a bit of a stretch, but for the builder it is still through-hole. It was both satisfying and frustrating. Frustrating because it limited the amount of functionality I could cram onto the board.

I love the old PCBs with their curved traces. I wish modern CAD programs had more flair. Have you seen these PCBs: https://www.boldport.com/ ?

[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

I personally don't like white PCBs, as they are really bright and always reflect light, even from nixies themselves - and I really enjoy my clocks digits  being the only thing visible in my dark room at night. Also, debugging a white PCB is a nightmare, traces are impossible to follow.
On the other hand, it looks very proffesional, like a  high-end product - with elements sticking out of a flat, uniform surface. And I have to agree that blue resistors really go well with white background.

Anyway, great job on the clock! Looks great.

W dniu środa, 26 września 2018 20:59:27 UTC+2 użytkownik Paul Andrews napisał:

I love the old PCBs with their curved traces. I wish modern CAD programs had more flair. Have you seen these PCBs: https://www.boldport.com/ ?

I think you'd like the TopoR autorouter. 
 

[Ian Vine]

Ah! The smell of phenolic pcbs when trying to desolder components and leaving the iron on too long.

Just noticed the "Archer" brand in the radio shack leaflet. That take me back

Ian

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[Mark Moulding]

Ah, the truth hurts.  "Old-fashioned" though it may be, this is the style of PC board that I design most of the time - I probably crank out half a dozen or so of these a year (and the number seems to be going up).  Although I have a surface-mount oven (commercial purpose-built - not a modified toaster oven), have made several SM boards, and many more boards with some SM components, my default choice for hobby purposes or limited-run products (such as clocks, or boutique musical electronics) is always through-hole.  It's so much easier to hand-assemble and debug, and "blue-wire" modifications are easier too (although I finally seem to be needing fewer of those now days).  Once I got used to it, though, routing is a bit easier with SM boards; most of mine are two-layer, with occasional four-layer for larger, more complex designs (>50 ICs).

Your board looks very nice.  Above and beyond functionality, your layout is very aesthetically pleasing.  The white surface provides a unique look, although it can be difficult to troubleshoot as others have pointed out; I personally prefer black.  Also, many of the board vendors offer ENIG gold coating as a surprisingly inexpensive option, and this brings a very high-quality look to a board - much like a piece of 1970s HP test equipment; soldering the ENIG can be a bit more fussy, although not bad (especially if you use good old SnPb solder).

I'm looking forward to seeing the case you put this in!
~~

Mark