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visrealm / pico-56

The HBC-56 (65C02/TMS9918A/AY-3-8910 retro computer) fully emulated on a Raspberry Pi Pico
https://youtube.com/@TroySchrapel
MIT License
107 stars 10 forks source link

Ground plane #11

Closed sweetlilmre closed 2 days ago

sweetlilmre commented 3 days ago

Hi there again!

First off not a major issue, so let me start with this: What a fantastic kit! Super well packaged, labelled and straight forward. My pico-56 is working and I'm amped to get into playing with it. I was lucky enough to to have a mate visiting from Oz that could bring it over for me.

While I was soldering up the board, I had some issues with components connected to the ground plane. I have a good temp controlled iron with a medium chisel tip and good thermal mass, that I usually run at 330C. This wasn't sufficient to create a good joint on certain components e.g. some caps, resistors, a transistor leg, pins on some connectors etc. I ended up having to boost the temp up to about 390-400C with uncomfortably long dwell times.

If I'm the only one with this issue, then tough for me, but I would suggest revising the PCB so that the these components are connected via traces through an island to the ground plane to make assembly easier.

Thanks for the awesome project.

visrealm commented 2 days ago

Thanks Peter.

You are the second person to mention this. The other was one of the giveaway winners.

I run a TS-100 with the BC2 tip at 375C. I haven't had the same issues having assembled ~25 of these, but certainly can see that it could be a problem.

If I make another revision of the board, I will certainly look to reduce the ground plane to pad connection thickness.

sweetlilmre commented 2 days ago

Thank you, I'll close this.