This post is the story behind the post from April the first. If you haven't read that, then have a look at that first.
http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2022/04/mini-pet-4080-advanced-level-kit.html
It covered the "Advanced Level Mini PET 40/80 kits", which are sadly not real.
These came about in March 2021, when the Mini PET 40/80 was about to be launched. What was meant to be a preview of the final batch of boards was ordered. When they arrived, there was a slight problem, the PCB manufacturers had missed out the silkscreen on the top layer.
I had to build up one of the blank ones, just to test the changes to V1.82, which was an interesting challenge without the silkscreen. I could probably have built one of the old Mini PETs completely without it, but with all the new passive components I had to resort to the cheat sheet.
Those blank boards arrived not long after the previous "An update to my PCB software broke my gerber files" day, which resulted in keyboard overlays with no holes in.
And again around the same time as "Windows Update broke my printer" day, so I had lots of duff labels to use.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so I built up the Stealth Mini PET. It was the end of March, so I thought I would delay the post until April 1st 2021.
I was offline at the time, so this only got shared with my Patreon supporters. I posted a lot of behind the scenes of the development of the Mini PETs and other projects, as well as other full posts. I am reposting a selection of those on this blog, usually revised and updated. I am continuing new posts and behind the scenes updates on Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/tynemouthsoftware
Roll on 2022, and I thought I would dig out the pictures up again for an April the first blog post.
It does actually look rather nice, and several people commented that they liked it. I do have a pile of the no silk screen PCBs left if anyone really wants to build one.
The real Mini PET 40/80 kits are still available from The Future Was 8 bit, although there aren't actually that many left, and I don't think we will be able to do any more.
https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/shop/tynemouth-products.html
