Reddit:Electronics

I’ve been working on this project for a while, and I’d like to share the progress here. I hope it will be interesting.This is ZX Spectrum 48k clone which I've designed and built myself. I've cheated a bit -- it has no video circuitry, HDMI video signal is generated by ZX-HD extension board(visible at the far side of the motherboard, I've bought it online). Next steps is USB keyboard adapter and 3D printed case.

Replaced for now. Phasing out this order equipment .

the frequency of this garage door remote. Thanks!

I recently designed a PCB for a buck converter. First I tried doing hand soldering (left side). It works but the quality is not what I expected and it took lot of time to do.

Then I bought a solder plaster syringe. Oh boo I was so easy to make solder. Just apply it and blow hot air. Done.

CAT cables are the best way to get good circuit building wire :)

I know there’s a 006003 existing, but not available to purchase yet…

So, I tried to free form a similar clock I free formed earlier this year, except it includes the hours, minutes, and seconds. I wanted to see if I could possibly improve my free forming builds compared with the first clock I built, but honestly, it still came out ugly to me.

At any rate, I kinda like the scraggly look of Freeform/dead bug electronics assembly. I'll never be as good as Mohit Bhoite, Eirik Brandal, etc. However, I noticed that building stuff like this is calming to me. It's difficult and stressful, although I find that when my job is pissing me off, I spent 15 minutes working on this clock to calm me down.

The awesome part was after I assembled everything onto the base, I decided to just power it up and see if it worked. At first, I set my power supply to 12v and limited the current to 100mA. It powered up and hit the 100mA limit. I slowly increased the current, and when I hit 250mA, all the nixies counted down from 9 to 0, then counted up from 0 to 9, and displayed the time. Sort of. I had to 'reset' the DS1302 RTC, installed the button cell battery, and cycled the power...and it just worked. I set the time, and there it was, a working nixie Freeform clock! At first I was excited, then thought, "but now I have nothing to troubleshoot..."

Where do I go from here? I don't know; I may be seriously thinking about free forming Keith Bayern's design, a discreet component nixie clock. That kit contains over 1,000 components, but it might be doable and pretty impressive