Apple ][ Prototyping Card

CURRENTLY UNTESTED!

After a recent purchase of an old Apple //e I concluded that most expansions I wanted were, as most things Apple these days, excessively priced - so I took it upon myself to make them myself instead. Bold statements aside, this was something that used to be an option back in the old days when Steve Wozniak was still central to the engineering genius that went into these machines.

First step on that route was obtaining something I could plug into one of the slots, so with a slightly altered edge connector footprint obtained from Xander's 8-bit fun the rest was hours of putting in holes for the prototyping areas. I wanted as much as possible out of the available space, but still be able to close the lid on all the mess I'm going to make so the original card dimensions as specified in Apple IIgs Tech Note #28 was followed within my ability to work with inches (thanks for that you imperial something or others).

The edge connector has 50 pins, a description of what function each of them serves can be found online - not that not all of them are present on every machine and type of slot available. All of the signals and power rails are available from a breakout connector above the edge connector, all of the pin names have been added to the reverse side for easier soldering.

Several versions of the prototyping boards are available, with size and cost being the main difference between them at this point in time. The smaller one should fit within the cheapest option for most Chinese PCB fabrication services, and so would be the perfect place to start when experimenting with the easier stuff. The fullsize version should give all the space you need for most projects. See PCB layout previews below to get an impression of how these will look.

Versions available

The following versions are currently available, I use PCBway and the small one should be around 5$ for 10 of them. Click the cards to go to the relevant details for the card, the order URLs point to my shared projects on PCBway:

• Small prototyping card
• Fullsize prototyping card

If you would like to have a copy of one or more modules, what you'll need to do is zip up the contents of the export directory for each module and give that to your favourite PCB fabrication plant. Personally I prefer to use PCBWay, the small one fits within the 5$ price and new accounts even get the first one free! Please use the supplied link when signing up to help me support this project, I'll get a small discount on future orders and hopefully I can afford to keep developing new and exciting stuff for old machines.