Simple KiCad For Simple Vintage Computer Hobbyists: Part 5 (VIC-20 RAM Expansion) [TCE #0597]

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Thanks to #PCBWAY for their ongoing support! http://www.pcbway.com/
Let's see if we can design an internal 8KB RAM upgrade board for the Commodore VIC-20 to replace suspect faulty chips, reduce power consumption & waste heat, and to upgrade it from 5KB to 8KB. In addition to KiCad we'll also utilise grok to help with the chip select logic design. It may work, it may not work ... let's see ...

The details for this design can be found on my Github:
https://github.com/0ddjob/Commodore_VIC20

Disclaimer: I'm not a Kicad super-user, I'm not a circuit design guru, I'm just a simple vintage computer hobbyist who needs simple PCBs from time to time. And yes, this sort of thing has probably been designed a dozen times before, but there's no harm in trying to learn how it's done is there?

I'm using Kicad 9.0 on a 2022 MacBook Air (M2 with 24GB RAM) running macOS 15.3.2 (24D81).

Application: KiCad arm64 on arm64
Version: 9.0.0, release build
Platform: macOS Sequoia Version 15.3.2 (Build 24D81), 64 bit, Little endian, wxMac

0:00:00 ... Intro
0:04:29 ... VIC's memory map
0:08:00 ... Re-designing the chip select signal
0:17:04 ... Using grok to help design the CS logic
0:33:20 ... Designing the schematic in KiCad
0:57:25 ... Designing the PCB
1:04:45 ... Final PCB design
1:08:05 ... Channel thanks & outro

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
https://karlcasey.bandcamp.com/
   / @whitebataudio  




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