Sell Gigatron?

[Albo]

Hi everyone!

May I build my on pcb, inspired on Gigatron, and sell kits?

[walter]

Answered in private message. (Boils down to: there's licenses attached to the source/manual/PCB that determine what you can do.)

It will be interesting to learn what your plans are, as you say it's not the Gigatron but a derivative. Would you like to share?

[Albo]

Yes, Walter. I plan share everything, let all licenses as they are.

My plan is just build a kit for brasilian people. Here, the price with import become expensive. Build it here is better to us.

I'd like to sell the same Gigatron, without modifications. But, if I can't, its ok. If I can build a derivative one, I will build and, before selling, show it to you. And, if you say "ok", I sell it as a kit to brasilian people.

[walter]

I wonder how you will be able to make it cheaper. Obviously, you can save on the box and the manual (the most expensive parts in the original kit). But you will need all the other components and the PCB.. and I don't think you can get it much cheaper, unless you go for refurbished components, but that is quite risky. We've heard stories of people buying "new" components that turned out to be empty DIP-packages!

Of course I do hope you will be able to succeed, allowing more people in Brazil to get their hands on one!

[Flamore]

Pretty sure that if you replaced the TTL THT chips with TTL SMD chips, the price could be cut down by a fair bit. And they could be bought from asian component suppliers (dirt cheap but works). like jlcpcb does with lcsc

[walter]

Is SMD cheaper? Then that might indeed be an option. It will make it harder to solder though, or you'd have to have the PCB supplier do it for you, which takes away from the whole learning experience (but that might be a choice). Beware of the Asian suppliers as I already said.. it's fine if you make one for yourself, but if you buy in bulk and then it turns out they're not ok..

[Albo]

Walter, I think the board price will be my chalenge! Framore, I prefere the dil encapsulament. Easy to replace for everyone. Here, in Brazil, it still easy to by dil chips than smd chips. Brazil is aways outdated.

[walter]

Are the DIL packages actually still produces in Brazil? (Or maybe other South American countries?) It surely makes sense to source locally then.

Companies like JLCPCB are not very expensive for PCBs, but the PCBs are still a large investment if you want to do a small batch.

[Flamore]

Are the DIL packages actually still produces in Brazil? (Or maybe other South American countries?) It surely makes sense to source locally then.

Companies like JLCPCB are not very expensive for PCBs, but the PCBs are still a large investment if you want to do a small batch.

Technically a rearrangement of components might change the distance between traces, of which theoretically comes smaller board and cheaper prices. (SMD's are only sold in bulk and they aren't as easy to solder as THT unless you have a heat gun/reflow oven and solder paste. That is harder to get than a soldering iron. But it can still be done with a soldering iron if you wish to do every pin individually with a high change of failure.)

[walter]

Yes that can be done. You can also get rid of all the 0.1uF capacitors, on eevblog it was shown it will still work without them. That will give a bit more space. You could also use a simple crystal oscillator (saves a few components including U1) and a normal EPROM. We included an old-skool clock circuit and UV-erasable EPROM for the retro-look but they are not necessary.