qbone and unibone availability

[Three Jeeps]

As of late, there has been several inquiries about obtaining a qbone and/or a unibone.  Seems like all of the responses say to contact decromancer.ca for parts/kits/assembled units for availability (at least for North America).  Having just done that as of late April 2026), the response is:

They do not have any unibone parts, kits, or assembled units

They do not have any qbone parts or kits.  They do have assembled qbone units.

A few months ago, Oscar pointed me to the unibone and qbone archive that contains the schematics, board layouts (done in kicad) and CPLD software.  I spend some time looking at the docs.

I am now considering 'rolling my own' boards that entails developing a parts list and sources (there is one floating around from 2024 but not clear what version of the PCB it is for), board houses to spin the boards, and program the CPLD. I think the first order of business is to ascertain the various board versions (some are laid out with different bus driver chips) and develop parts lists that match the latest board revs.  I started to do this but life threw me a curve and won't be able to continue for about 3-4 weeks.  I lost my access to a CPLD programmer so need to find someone to do that.  

On the PCB front, most board houses want to run a minimum number of boards (e.g. 5). I guess I am trying to determine if there is enough interest  from a group of people to get a small number of both unibone and qbone boards made along with CPLDs.  

Obviously, this approach is a do it yourself 'kit building' exercise. 

There are some board houses that will spin a board and populate it.  Its been quite a while since I looked into that but my recollection is that it gets to be somewhat costly - setup time is time expensive.

If there are some people with similar interests, we could form a group of ppl to do the above tasks.  Thoughts? Interested? 

Best regards

John

[Mark Matlock]

John,

   I was one of the UniBone beta testers back in 2019 working with Joerg and Josh Dersch to help debug the MSCP emulation, so I am familiar with them.

    In 2020, Joerg asked me to produce some of the first version of the QProbe to meet some of the US demand since Covid was impacting supply chains. This involved having JLCPCB produce the boards, they did all the SMD soldering including two CPLDs.  I had to find sources for ~1000 tiny LEDs, lots of IDE connectors, IC sockets and miscellaneous components. I also had to get some parts 3D printed, program the CPLDs and package it all into kits. The QProbe was later simplified and from that the QProbe 2023 front panel display for QBus systems was developed.

   From that experience, I learned that you should try to have JLCPCB supply as many components as possible, and have them SMD solder as much as possible. You can see how Joan has taken this to a new level with the QBone Dual. The availability of Bus Driver chips has been a big problem for the QBone. I think the UniBus driver chips are less of a problem but that needs to be confirmed.

   Joerg has always been very open and generous with information about his many PDP-11 hardware and software projects. We all owe him a huge thank you for his great work.

Best,

Mark

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[Todd Goodman]

FWIW, I have Joerg's qbone and unibone bare boards (listed at my inventory page at https://wiki.bonedaddy.net/doku.php?id=boardinventory down under the DEC boards section.)

They're unpopulated.  They have "real" hard gold fingers.  They were purchased in bulk before all the tariff increases (so lower price than I could get them for now in the US) and I do this for a hobby so sell at cost.

Please email me directly if interested.

Thanks,

Todd

[Mark Matlock]

Todd,

   I had forgotten about your bare board inventory, thanks for mentioning it. I’ve bought several DEC extender boards from you in the past. I need to look through what you have and see if there is anything I need.

BEst Regards,

Mark

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[Todd Goodman]

Hi Mark (and all in the group,)

I'm sorry, my mistake on the qbone.  I have the qprobe, not the qbone currently.

I'm willing to do a run (and price surface mounted population) but I'm not sure it makes sense with the Decromancer qbone dual available.

Apologies,

Todd