Lets get started
My first project was a simple board for the 68HC11 MCU. Here is the story for this one: I found this web site describing how to make a PCB using laser printer. The process known as "Toner transfer". My friend George said "let's do this, but what board should we make?". At that time I had those 68HC11 parts lying around, so I started designing a board with the MCU and some extras. The down side of the "Toner transfer" process is that you can only make single layer boards. So as much as I wanted to have some SRAM(4) and FLASH ROM I could not convince my design software to trace the board using only one layer.
Some sacrifices have to be made so all the external RAM and ROM is gone. The final design tuned to be quite simple, yet it is possible to do some programming even with this "bare" board.
Here is the final board made using the "Toner transfer" process.
Not bad for a first attempt. The board had only two errors :).
For the schematics and some explanation click here.
Here are some more pictures of the board:
| This is the board with the PLCC socket,
the RS232 driver the crystal and the IO connectors. The big knife is for my sandwich and is not required for the assembly process. |
Here is the board with all the components. Before I solder them. | ||
| Here is another view with all components. | The final board with the MCU inside. |
For this board I used MAX202 instead of MAX232, which is exactly the same chip, except the external capacitors are 0.1uF instead of 10uF.