This is a situation I mentioned in a social media post last week, and it's just happened again.
The "Yay!" moment of "I Sold One!", followed quickly by the realisation "Oh!, now I have to write the documentation."
When I was writing up a PET mainboard repair a few months, I used one of my standard bits of test kit, a simple LED display board connected to the userport.
It occurred to me that I had designed this many years ago, but never got around to listing it on my online stores. I think at the time I was moving between the old SellMyRetro store (which is currently mothballed) and the new Tindie store (which only appears like that sometimes, maybe more tumbleweeds than mothballs.....).
To coincide with the blog post going live, I decided to list it and got together the various bits I needed for the Tindie listing.
The obligatory photograph of the board at a jaunty angle of my world famous desk top.
The knolled kit photo.
And various examples of use with the various supported machines.
In this case I also took some screenshots of a simple test program.
I think they were as usual pretty awful, so I used screenshots of the vice emulator instead.
(hang on, how have I only just noticed the VIC in the vice name, is it VIC Emulator? how did I not twig that until now?, in which case "vice emulator" is one of those cases or unnecessary duplication, I should just say "in vice".)
That was everything I needed for the Tindie listing
Once I had taken all the photos etc., I thought I may as well write that up as a blog post.
So I did.
That used mostly the same content, but I wanted to add a schematic.
The version I had originally drawn was just functional enough to enable me to make the PCB.
That didn't look quite right, so I thought I should tidy it up a bit. How hard can it be?
That didn't look right either, too squashed up.
That's a bit odd, sort of zig-zagging across the page.
Turning the resistor array around seemed to look better, and when I exported that to get the image to use in the blog, I added some colour to the LEDs.
That was the version I finally unleased on the world in the blog post.
Then came the tumbleweeds as nothing happened for a month.
And continued to happen into a second month.
Then I sold one!
Yay!
Thank you to the person who bought one, any order is always appreciated.
However when I came to pack the order, I realised I hadn't actually written the documentation.
Now it's not that difficult to see what you need to do, solder eight LEDs and one resistor array and an edge connector and away you go.
But I did think I should probably include my usual style datasheet to describe the POKEs required and include the test listings etc.
So, time to write some documentation.
I had most of the things, already, all that was missing was the component placement diagram I usually include.
I was going to leave the schematic as it was, but I still didn't think it was right, so I had another go.
I haven't split up a resistor array in a schematic like that before, but it seemed to work here.
A final flourish after export was to add the LED colours and change the line style to dashed for the container box for the resistor array.
I think that will do (for now at least).
I know it's the sort of thing most people don't care about, but I like to try to find the clearest and neatest solution when I can.
The documentation is now complete and you can see it on the listing marked as "datasheet".
When I found I had kept all the old versions of the schematics, I thought it might be interesting to show the process and the hoops I have to go through. Actually, I don't have to go through, I chose to go through to make what I think is a better product.
I hope you did actually find that interesting.
Adverts
This and other PET repair parts are available from my Tindie store:
PET ROM/RAM:
PET Diagnostics:
Mini PET 40/80 Internal
Or if you decide you want to take the easier route, I have recently built some more Mini PET 40/80 Internal boards, that are a drop in replacement for boards like this one.
Shipping
I can still ship worldwide from my Tindie store and US orders are now tariffs paid.
Currently it looks like Royal Mail to the US is working. I pay the 10% tariffs as part of the postage to (hopefully) avoid delays and additional costs at customs. The increased US postage costs cover this.
Patreon
You can support me via Patreon, and get access to advance previews of development logs on new projects like the Mini PET II and Mini VIC and other behind the scenes updates.This also includes access to my Patreon only Discord server for even more regular updates.
