Hi All,

We are rapidly approaching our long weekend of tech activities in Hebden Bridge.

Al Wood and I will be jointly hosting a workshop session on Sunday 25th August. 

This year, following on from Al's excellent custom keyboard workshop last August will have something more of a RetroComputing theme. 

The goal of the workshop is to build from scratch, up to 20, 8-bit, bit serial computers, known as "Tick"  based, almost entirely on 74HCxx series logic.

For this workshop to run smoothly, there are a number of pre-requisites, needed to be downloaded which will allow us to get off to a quick start. If you wish to attend, could you please install the following packages:

1. H. Neemann's "Digital" simulator  https://github.com/hneemann/Digital

2. Once you have "Digital" you will then be able to access the relevant schematics, simulations and build guides from my Github repo. The bulk of the teaching documentation will be held on my "Tick-Talk" repo, here https://github.com/monsonite/TICK_TALK/tree/main

Ignore anything more than 2 weeks old - the relevant info is from the last 3 days.

3. You will be given a Pi Pico clone to act as the interface to the Tick CPU and it's memory.  To program this, I have been using Arduino, with board files installed for the RP2040 microcontroller.  The downloads are on this repo:  https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico

So, on Sunday, if you have all 3 repos accessible on your laptop - it will allow us to get off to a good start. I will have given an overview of the workshop and the "Tick" project during my presentation on Saturday.

This will be a hands on, practical course, involving a fair amount of soldering of through-hole components. If you are not experienced in soldering, I am sure that you can be "buddied up" with someone who can guide you.

The pcb is 110mm x 110mm and holds 28 small 74HCxx ICs plus a "ROM" and and RAM.  All components including ICs and sockets, passives, connectors, switches, LEDs and the Pi Pico clone will be supplied.

However the Pi Pico needs a USB C cable.  There are 2 solutions - bring your own genuine Pi Pico with the micro USB cable or bring a USB C cable for the low cost clone Pico.

The build sequence is broken down into 5 separate stages. Each stage covers a small subset of the components - about 5 or 6 ICs, and there is a scope available so you can test the stage works before you move onto the next stage. If we start at 10am, we should complete the pcbs before 3pm.

I would strongly suggest that you organise yourselves into small teams of 3 or 4. Even if we only build 5 or 6 boards on Sunday, new pcbs will be issued in September, so its perhaps better to save your kit for the revised pcb.

One should have a strong hardware construction skillset, another should be a competent programmer and the third should focus on finding documents and reading instructions for the other team members.

Finally:

A shout-out for anyone to bring in their personal soldering stations, flux, solder and rework tools and possibly fume extraction. There are about 650 IC through-hole pins to solder.

A full kit component kit will be issued on receipt of £20. A V2 kit (pcb + connectors) will be offered at a discount, when available. All socketed ICs can be reused in V2.

Don't forget either a USB C cable or bring your own Pi Pico and micro USB cable.


Thanks in advance,

Ken