Gigatron Hackers

Hi all,
this is to share with the forum my second build of Gigatron. The first one is the original kit with ROM v.1 and the beautiful case, that I like to keep untouched.
I have assembled a second one, mostly from recycled parts, in order to play and experiments with it.
I also added memory expansion and the Pluggy Reoaded from original design from norgate, just modifiyng it to match the single side pcb board I had available. Basically the same original design but with some jumpers on the component side, as shown in the pictures.

Maybe I'll add soon the RAM expansion & IO board.

Nice pics, looks great!

WARNING... just in case someone with passion for DIY, like me, uses my PCB photo as example.

Today I received the keyboard with PS/2 plug and the microSD card, so I had the possibility to fully test the Pluggy Reloaded I built. When I posted the pictures I only had the possibility to try with the gigatron game controller and it worked fine.

When I connected the keyboard I noticed that gigatron turned off and I immediately removed the keyboard plug. It was just a sec and I was lucky for the keyboard, because checking again the pin numbering of the PS/2 socket I discovered that my PCB connection was exactly mirrored. Probably I got confused by top-side or bottom-side view on the datasheet.

Anyway I just modified the connection of PS/2 socket on copper side of PCB using wires and now it works perfectly. Also the keyboard luckily resisted to a (more or less) one sec. polarity reversal on power supply.

Nicely etched. And a blue PCB.. I hadn't seen a blue one before.