Help Fund The A4000 Replica Project

[Acill]

I've started a Go Fund Me campaign for getting the 4000 (NON-CR) Rev B reverse engineered. All project files will be open and public. The cost for this being done by a US company is not cheap but also very fair for what we get in return. Please take a look at the page here and help if you can!

https://www.gofundme.com/amiga-4000-replica-with-schematics

[Acill]

That sounds cool.

Did you see this? Someone already did this.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=73426

Not the same project and not released public. Its like the AmyITX and seems to be very exclusive.

[Acill]

What made you jump to that conclusion? It will be released to the public.

If it is that's great. My goal is for the older board. If funded we will have access to both boards as new and will be an amazing thing to offer.

[Acill]

The Rev B is the most common board. I fix rotten 4000 boards all the time and its a pain in the ass. I wanted new boards and so do a lot of others. If you are looking for a new machine made from this its the wrong thing for you. Its entire point is to have new boards for repairing old dead ones. The other project is for the CR and is a much rarer board. It does no good for those looking to get a repair done on a Rev 2. This also will be fully public and all files released as well. The last thing was i had to give up my good 4000 for this and have it reverse engineered, so as far as being a money grab I lost money, not gained any.

As far as getting money, did you look at my go fund me I have the invoice right on it show exactly what it will cost and what is delivered. This included CAD files, schematics, gerbers and manufacturing data all needed for the production of new boards.

[Acill]

While the effort is admirable, the fact that PADS is being used is problematic to me. it is very high-end software, which very few people have access to.

Porting between EDA packages is a pretty dicey proposition - errors are often introduced, layouts munged, etc.

I think that the effort would be tremendously more interesting, valuable, and would get more support if it was done in KiCad. There would never be a question of anyone being able to access the information. Eagle doesn't achieve that, especially as Autodesk is closing that package off (and a board that size, and with the likely stackup, isn't going to load into "free" Eagle anyways).

My $.02

Yeah, i am using a very high end professional design company to do this. If your interested in a hobby level one you can take advantage of the Henes project. The ability to convert to Altium and maybe Eagle is there once done. I have been ensured I can get Altium exports done. The entire point of this is for new PERFECT boards done on very high level precision equipment. The fact I was able to get it done for only $5k is a huge perk and an amazing deal. If you look into what this can cost to have a professional board lay out done you will see its 10's of thousands usually.

[Acill]

Have you seen this yet?
https://github.com/scratje/a4000
This is created from the amigapcb.org data.

He released that to help, but it's not accurate enough to use for boards, it's helped a lot with getting started though.

[Acill]

What do you think the production cost of the boards will be?

Depends on where you go, how many you get and the quantity you get. Once this is completed I fully plan to order several of them. I will make the option to do a group buy before I do it though so those wanting only a single board will be able to get one at a fair price. I expect from $50-100 each.

[Acill]

Are we still able to source all the surface components these days and even if we could i guess building one from scratch would be a difficult rask .

I have help getting a BOM together, and yes its all available still. Some of it is a bit tricky to get, but not impossible.

[Acill]

Amiga on the Lake has generously agreed to help us get this last bit of funding a bit easier for those that want to use PayPal for a donation. If you would like to donate but only have PayPal to use you can donate here and they will in return donate on your behalf to the campaign. Thanks so much to Aaron Smith for helping to offer this!

The donation link is here: http://amigaonthelake.com/aotl-donations/

[Acill]

Good news! I will be going to the shop on Wednesday to make the initial payment and have work started! The goal is to have the board work done and complete in 4 to 6 weeks. The goal is to recreate the entire design. They will provide everything they create, including the PADS and Altium design databases.

The donate page can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/amiga-4000-replica-with-schematics

Also dont forget you can have Amiga on the Lake donate for you if you want to use paypal and dont have a card supported here. http://amigaonthelake.com/aotl-donations/

[Acill]

https://www.gofundme.com/amiga-4000-replica-with-schematics



Today is a amazing update day for this project! I am happy to say that I put in the remaining balance myself to get things moving at the PCB design house. They have the original board to use, all the required information and the most important thing, they got paid! What this means is things have STARTED!!!!!!

The delivery items to us are even better now thanks to the significant speed at which we paid them, and the extra work I did to supply as much as possible to help with the creation of everything. So what will we get you may ask? Well EVERYTHING!!! The project databases in Altium, PADs and hold on......EAGLE!!!! All Gerber's, new matching schematics that go with the new layout done in tandem, BOM sheets, manufacturing guides, and things I missed I am sure. So this will allow us to not only get NEW BOARDS, but once I ahve it all organized and hosted someone can take these design files and improve on it or whatever you need!

I want to thank everyone that helped make this possible. It has been a lot of stress, work and back and forth communication with the design house, but I think in the end it will be an amazing achievement! This is a real first at this level for ANY Amiga community project and you should all be very proud! I know I am.

[Acill]

Initial Github built. Nothing newly created added just yet, but will be adding things as they are released. Any help with this is greatly appreciated.

https://github.com/Acill/A4000RevB

[Acill]

Things have gone very well with the project! For those that have been following it on other forums while this one has been offline, you know its funded and the first prototype boards are in my possession. A couple of us will be building them up over the next couple weeks and test the board. Once its complete and we know they are working I will be posting the remaining files. You can currently get everything you need off the GitHub that's been created except pre-generated Gerbers. Those will come after this last functional testing.

[Acill]

For those that didn't know here is the project page. Everything is posted up and it's the single source for those looking. I also have a few boards in red left from my last run.

https://github.com/Acill/A4000RevB

[Acill]