Mike's Hobby Blog

The front and back copper layers are starting to look pretty good. I can still make some improvements, but I’ll take a break from focusing on those layers and do some work on the silkscreen layer. I feel comfortable enough with progress that I’ve started ordering enough parts for about 12 boards. Attached is an image of the front copper and solder mask artwork colorized and put next to the same image of an actual original board. This kind of comparison can help with accuracy. In creating this comparison image, I found 3 to 4 things that need correcting. Can you find them? Note the hard corners of the digial traces as compared to the actual board. I intend to soften those corners, before going to production, but it will be one of the last things that I do.

I’m making progress, have aligned a lot of the back. Check out these two images, but keep in mind that I’m not done tweaking.
My layout overlaid over a photo of the corner of an actual Apple 1.

My layout overlaid over a photo of the corner of an obtronix clone.

I’m making good progress – the digital section is wired. Working on the power supply section. Still a whole lot to do, though.

This board is proving to be tougher in some respects than the Apple II. I’m glad I did the II, first. The Apple 1 has slightly smaller traces that are closer together than the II. Bus layout is also more difficult to replicate as the II had most of the busses running under the rows of RAM/ROM and Slots, which made for fairly easy alignment between the rows of pins.

The board is also slightly larger than a II, with a gold finger connecter (more $$). With the rarity of parts, plus power supply circuitry, I wouldn’t be surprised if this going to cost as much or more to put together than the II.

Also I plan on building a batch of the PS2 to ASCII keyboard http://www.willegal.net/appleii/appleii-kb-int.htm interfaces to go with this project. This will provide an easy way to download software, such as Basic from a PC into the machine without having to deal with a cassette port.

One other point for those that have seen the Obtronix replica. That was a very well done project. However, I’m expecting that my Apple 1 PCB will have even more accurate routing of traces, as well as a more accurate silkscreen. Check out my rev 0 replica to actual comparison page http://www.willegal.net/appleii/appleii-compare.htm to see what I expect to do for the Apple 1.

I estimate that this project will take 4-6 months, possibly longer to put together, so if you want a nice project to fill in some of the time, while you wait, Apple II rev 0’s kits are available and ready to ship.

I’m able to wire in two to three 16 pin chips a day. Attached is a snapshot showing current state of the project.

Regards,
Mike Willegal

Using available off the web images, I had already done some preliminary work on the PCB layout. However this was put on hold, sometime back, due to lack of really good images of the original. It was too hard to work with the relatively low res images, that I had. Last week, an Apple 1 owner provided me with hi-res pictures of the front and back of an original Apple 1 motherboard.

For some bizarre reason, I derive a lot of satisfaction from the process of reproducing an original board. Now that I have an quality original image of both front and back, I can hardly stop myself from working on it. I will be able to leverage experience and CAD libraries from the Rev 0 project, so I’m hoping that this project moves along a little quicker than the rev 0 project, did. To make up for this, I do expect a lot of challenges obtaining some of the rare components needed to build an operating Apple 1.

I do hope I can come up with an image of an original board, without components mounted on it, which would remove the guesswork of routing traces hidden by components. However I’m not considering this a show-stopper.

Regards,
Mike Willegal