Backlog Building/Building Backlog

Posted on by

Projects are starting to back up on my bench.

Assembly Line

Assembly Line

I’ve never been that excited about repetitive work, but I have a few things to catch up on, before moving on to the “new” stuff I have on the backlog.

  • 2nd set of “core” boards for the SCELBI 8B – up till now, I’ve been using the “core” boards that I built for my 8H, but I want to demonstrate both systems side by side. The two boards in the photo are SCELBI CPU boards. Having the first that I made, available to examine, was helpful when building the second one, and saved a little time.
  • Screen printing 8B front panels
  • Wiring the I/O harness for the 8B chassis
  • Also notice the stack of “new” boards in the background, I can’t wait to get to work on those, but I need to finish the 8B, first.

    • Right now building the 2nd set of “core” boards is in progress. When I first built the 8H, I bought enough parts for 2 sets of “core” boards. However some of those parts got used up in other projects. I’m building with what I have and when I get everything put together as far as I can, I’ll order whatever I have run short of. At the same time, I’ll put together a BOM for those “new” boards in the background and get what I need for those. Postage costs will really kill you, if you are constantly ordering 1 or 2 parts at a time. That is something I try to avoid, though often unsuccessfully. Here are a couple of facts that will give you an idea of how many parts that I have gone through, while building two SCELBIs.

  • Counting the 128 sockets I added for the SRAM, the total number of parts on the eight PCBs that make up a 4K SCELBI 8H is 707. add approximately 150 wires, about 60 connectors, switches and card guides on the backplane and chassis and you have well over 900 parts for the complete system. If you count individual washers and nuts, the number goes up even more. With an added board and more components on the SRAM boards, the 8B has even more components
  • 26 fuse clips are in a SCELBI 8H and there are 22 in a SCELBI 8B. I think I bought something like 50 fuse clips when I started on the 8H and at this point I’ll not have enough to put together those “new” boards

    • If you like to build complex gadgets, the SCELBI’s are amazing projects. The best part is that they are relatively well engineered, so if you work carefully, once completed, they usually work. I can’t think of any project that has given me more pleasure. Even, the repetitive work of making the second set of “core” boards has been fun, at least once I found the gumption to start on them.

    One thought on “Backlog Building/Building Backlog”

    Comments are closed.