Last week I completed the board layout for BMOW, determining the placement for all the chips and other components. I even went as far as soldering in all the bypass capacitors, and wiring power and ground to the crystal oscillator socket. Then I placed the oscillator in its socket, put the whole board into my “case” (a piece of wood), and connected the power supply. Then I used a logic probe to verify that the oscillator was in fact oscillating. I guess you could call that a first boot-up, of a sort.

I’m afraid wiring progress is going to be painfully slow, for a variety of reasons. I started translating my schematic diagrams into a wire list. It’s basically just a long list of pairs of pins on the board, e.g. connect AW44 to AX38. It took me ages to generate the list for the clock generator module, which has only four components and is the simplest of all the modules.

My bigger worry is that the actual task of wiring is dreadfully slow. I probably need better tools, or better technique, or both. Say I need to wire AW44 to AX38. I unreel some wire from the spool, and put it in my handy-dandy combination cutter/stripper. It’s supposed to cut and strip five wires at once, but I don’t see how. I put the wire in, then tug and twist at the stripper for 30 seconds before the insulation comes off. Then I flip the wire around, cut the other end, and repeat my 30 second struggle with the stripper. After that, I have to carefully thread the wire into a tiny hole in my wire wrap tool, wrap the tool around the pin, and twist several revolutions until the wire is complete. Once that’s done, I repeat the process with the other end of the wire. In total, it makes me a minute or two just to do a single wire, and there will be thousands of wires required.

I’ve decided to postpone further wiring for the moment. My board layout doesn’t include any components for a keyboard interface or real-time clock, two things which I planned to add later. But after more thought, I’ve decided that I should figure out how those will integrate with everything else now, under the theory that it will be much easier to make any necessary changes while the design is still just on paper.

Lastly, I’ve begun daydreaming about ways to construct a nice case for BMOW. I’m not especially handy, so something mostly pre-built would be ideal. On the other hand, I don’t really want to just shove it in a standard PC case, because then it’ll look like a standard PC. I want an interesting, out of the ordinary case that complements my home-built CPU technology. I thought about gutting a Nintendo NES or some other retro equipment to use as a case, but most of the likely candidates aren’t large enough (my board is 12.5 x 7 inches). Generic external hard drive cases are too small as well.

I’ll probably end up building a custom case out of wood and plastic, but I’m no shop pro. The last time I tried to cut plexiglass, the result looked pretty crappy. I’ll also need to drill holes for the power switch, reset switch, power connector, keyboard, and USB, which will be a pain in the ass. Maybe I should just give up, and use a generic PC case.