Monday, August 27, 2018

Prelude to a Kit (Final Expansion 3)

Let me just show a few photos of what came in the Final Expansion 3 kit for the VIC-20 (that I ordered from SkydivinGirl over on the Atari Age forum) before I get down to beginning assembly, just so people can see what is in the box.

Here is how it came packaged.  I think this is fine because there is nothing in here that could be considered fragile, at least in the sense that glass is fragile.  ;-)


This is the bare board in a nice bright fire engine red.  You may notice there are a few spots where parts will need to be surface mounted, but its mostly thru-hole.  It should be a pretty easy build.  I used to do a lot of PCB assembly in my youth, so I'm comfortable with this.



The ICs came in this anti static bag. My understanding is that the ROMs are already programmed.


Here are the capacitors, resistors and other parts.


Finally it comes with two different kinds of stickers to choose from for the top of the cartridge case, which is not included.




I decided that I would not buy the optional case, which is more than $20 by itself.  Instead I decided to sacrifice an original VIC-20 Mole Attack! game to provide a cartridge.  I will need to cut some openings for the SIO ports that Final Expansion 3 uses to connect to the VIC-20 serial port and also out to another serial device such as a floppy drive.  Also openings for the SD card slot and for a bank of DIP switches will be needed.



Finally I'll note that the kit doesn't come with any assembly instructions, which surprised me.  Instead I needed to Google for them.  Save a tree?

Here's the link for the instructions.  They are for an older version of the board, but they should suffice.   http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=767044

1 comment:

Heather Kent said...

Looks good! If you look at the original sales thread, a link to the assembly directions are there. And yes, definitely save a tree. :)