Board tester board...

So a while back I brought up the idea to make a "universal" test board
for working on game PCB's.

The idea was to make something that would plug into a game board
directly (56 pin, 44 pin, or 36 pin) and provide a simple connection to
a PC power supply; provide lots of test points for jumpering; have a
small onboard audio amp; provide "standard" connectors for
control/video/audio connections; lots of taps for +5, +-12, etc.

We kicked around other ideas like adding color inversion for
Nintendo-type audio outputs, sync combination (select
positive/negative/composite), and stuff like level convertors for
different types of vector games.

     AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
   +------------------+
   | | <-- card edge adapter
    ------------------
   | |
   | |
   | | <-- test connector board
   | |
   | PWR RGB CONT AUD |
   +------------------+

A = 56, 44, or 36 pin .156" connector
PWR = .156" power connector post to match PC-AT power supply
RGB = DB-9 pin connector
CONT = DB-25 pin connector (two joysticks, six buttons, p1/p2 start,
coins, etc)
AUD = onboard speaker and amp, headphone jack output for amplified
      "computer" type speakers.

So you just plug it into the cardedge of a board and use little
alligator-clip jumpers to connect your voltages, controls, and signals
where needed. It's not exactly an "innovation" or anything, I just
think it'd be a much nicer (for me anyway) way of testing "unknown"
boards.

The thing I can't decide is how to do the test points. I want to have
at least 3 or 4 points on each trace coming off the connector so that
you have plenty of posts to connect aligator clips to when testing. Do
you think that standard .1" header posts are good enough? Maybe on .2"
spacing? (So I'm thinking of getting 8 pin DIP headers, removing every
other pin to make room for clips, and putting one of those on each trace
 from the edge connector.) Heavier "posts" (like Atari's test points)
are comparitively spendy and take up a lot of PCB space.

If anyone of you have input I'd like to hear it...

-Clay
Received on Thu Feb 26 15:22:13 1998