December 2021

JRC-1 Has Officially Arrived!

I’m happy to report that the JRC-1 boards arrived a few days ago, and exactly as I predicted I had a build up and running by Christmas. Here it is, in all of its black solder mask glory:

JRC-1 as of 2021-12-23

I guess the third time’s a charm, because this is my third full build, and the board booted up with no hardware issues. It’s currently running at 4 MHz; it should run faster but I have not tried yet.

The board is not perfect; there are a couple minor problems with the layout. The footprints for the DS1813s (the reset and NMI controllers) are reversed, and the footprints for the expansion slots don’t fit the slot connectors I have. Neither problem is critical and both have easy workarounds, so at this point I am considering this design final. All of the the hardware design files (KiCad project and CPLD Verilog project), as well as the latest firmware code, are in the JRC-1 GitHub repository.

With the board up and running I am turning my attention to the firmware. Currently I’m working on cleaning up the code so that I can start the major work. Next up is getting the SD card driver working, and then work on JR/OS. That’s where the real fun begins!

December 27, 2021 by Electronics JRC-1 Projects 0

A Quick JRC-1 Update

Well folks, today the JRC-1 project reached a major milestone: the design is complete, and parts and PC boards have been ordered!

KiCad 3-D rendering of the final board design.

I should to have everything in my hands in about a week, and with some luck, a working assembled board a few days after that.

Ordering PC boards is always a bit nerve wracking for me. One can never be 100% sure that a board is going to work until you get them back from the fab house and try assembling one. In addition, the final JRC-1 board comes in at 200×120 mm, which is considerably larger (and more expensive) than any of my previous designs. Still, I am very relieved to have finally hit this milestone, and assuming no major problems arise with the design I can shift my focus to creating the BIOS and operating system.

Over the next few days I will be copying most of the information from my private JRC-1 planning document over to the JRC-1 home page. This will include information such as the memory layout, component information, and details on the expansion slots and user port. Stay tuned.

December 11, 2021 by Electronics JRC-1 Projects 0