They Used To Be A Big Shot, Now Eagle Is No More

June 9, 2023 by Jenny List 246 Comments

There once was a time when to make a PCB in our community was to use CadSoft EAGLE, a PCB design package which neatly filled the entry level of that category with a free version for non-commercial designs. Upgrading it to the commercial version was fairly inexpensive, and indeed that was a path which quite a few designers making the step from hobby project to small production would take.

Then back in 2017, CadSoft were bought by Autodesk, and their new version 8 of the software changed its licensing model from purchase to rental. It became a product with a monthly subscription and an online side, and there began an exodus of users for whom pay-to-play meant too much risk of losing access to their designs. Now six years later the end has come, as the software behemoth has announced EAGLE’s final demise after a long and slow decline. Continue reading “They Used To Be A Big Shot, Now Eagle Is No More” →

30-Year-Old Macintosh SE/30 Gets A Brand New Logic Board

March 24, 2021 by Zach Zeman 36 Comments

Some time ago, [Bolle] got the idea to redraw the Macintosh SE/30 schematics in Eagle. Progress was initially slow, but over the past month (and with some prodding and assistance from fellow forum frequenter [GeekDot]), he’s taken things a step further by creating a fully functional replacement Macintosh SE/30 logic board PCB.

By using the available schematics, the project didn’t even require much reverse engineering. Though he plans for more modernization in later iterations, this design is largely faithful to the original components and layout, ensuring that it is at least basically functional. He did update the real time clock battery to a CR2032 and, as a benefit of redrawing all the traces, he was able to use a 4-layer PCB in place of the costly 6-layer from Apple’s design.

The board came back from fabrication looking beautiful in blue; and, once he had it soldered up and plugged in, the old Mac booted on the very first try! A copy-paste mistake with the SCSI footprints led to some jumper wire bodging in order to get the hard drive working, but that problem has already been fixed in the next revision. And, otherwise, he’s seen no differences from the original after a few hours of runtime.

Recreating old Macintosh logic boards almost seems like its own hobby these days. With the design and fabrication capabilities now accessible to hobbyists, even projects that were once considered professional work are in reach. If you’re interested in making your own PCB designs, there are many resources available to help you get started. Alternatively, we have seen other ways to modernize your classic Macs.

[Thanks to techknight for the tip!]

Hackaday Prize Entry: Tongue Vision

October 3, 2016 by Moritz Walter 17 Comments

Visually impaired people know something the rest of us often overlooks: we actually don’t see with our eyes, but with our brains. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Ray Lynch] is building a tongue vision system, that will help blind people to see through one of the human brain’s auxiliary ports: the taste buds.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: Tongue Vision” →

This EAGLE Script Gets Quotes For Your Boards

September 11, 2016 by Moritz Walter 23 Comments

Weary of manually entering manufacturing parameters into PCBShopper’s web form, [Jeremy Ruhland] created an awesome shortcut: His ULP script lets you obtain quotes from 26 PCB manufacturers around the world directly from your EAGLE board layout.

The script extracts all relevant data from your layout, including board size, the layer count, minimum trace widths and hole diameters. It then let’s you specify a few more in a tidy dialogue before sending you to the PCB manufacturing price comparison site PCBShopper.com with a custom query for board quotes.

Have a board layout..

..run [Jeremy’s] ULP script..

..get quotes!

It works like a charm, and [Jeremy] also plans to add a shortcut button to the EAGLE layout editor’s toolbar. Since the script implements the entire PCBShopper API, for which [Jeremy] cooperates with PCBShopper.com owner [Bob Alexander], it’s also a great starting point for the development of scripts that work with other board layout tools.

Thanks to [Matthew Venn] for the title photo (via Flickr)!

Making Eagle Work With Circuits.io

February 21, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 25 Comments

Ever so slowly, we’re inching towards a world of Internet-based electronic design tools. The state of these tools, including Upverter and other cloud-based solutions, hasn’t been all that great until now; with any new piece of schematic capture and PCB layout software, the libraries will be woefully inadequate in the beginning. This is about to change, because circuits.io is now allowing Eagle libraries to be imported.

As you may well be aware, Eagle is the de facto standard for homebrew and hobbyist schematic capture and board layout software. Even though Eagle isn’t open source and is limited to rather small PCBs with the free version, somehow Eagle has retained its popularity, most likely due to the huge number of component libraries available.

By allowing users and designers to import Eagle libraries, the folks at circuits.io are capitalizing on a huge amount of work done by designers and engineers over the years in creating custom Eagle parts for just about every component imaginable. It’s a great accomplishment for the circuits.io team and a boon for anyone wanting to move their PCB design tools over to the cloud.