Game Boy PCB Assembled With Low-Cost Tools

April 22, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

As computers have gotten smaller and less expensive over the years, so have their components. While many of us got our start in the age of through-hole PCBs, this size reduction has led to more and more projects that need the use of surface-mount components and their unique set of tools. These tools tend to be more elaborate than what would be needed for through-hole construction but [Tobi] has a new project that goes into some details about how to build surface-mount projects without breaking the bank.

The project here is interesting in its own right, too: a display module upgrade for the classic Game Boy based on an RP2350B microprocessor. To get all of the components onto a PCB that actually fits into the original case, though, surface-mount is required. For that [Tobi] is using a small USB-powered hotplate to reflow the solder, a Pinecil, and a healthy amount of flux. The hotplate is good enough for a small PCB like this, and any solder bridges can be quickly cleaned up with some extra flux and a quick pass with a soldering iron.

The build goes into a lot of detail about how a process like this works, so if you’ve been hesitant to start working with surface mount components this might be a good introduction. Not only that, but we also appreciate the restoration of the retro video game handheld complete with some new features that doesn’t disturb the original look of the console. One of the other benefits of using the RP2350 for this build is that it’s a lot simpler than using an FPGA, but there are perks to taking the more complicated route as well.

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Track Your Circuits: A Locomotive PCB Badge

April 18, 2025 by Matt Varian 7 Comments

This fun PCB from [Nick Brown] features a miniature railroad implemented with 0805-sized LEDs. With an eye towards designing his own fun interactive PCB badge, the Light-Rail began its journey. He thoroughly documented his process, from shunting various late-night ideas together to tracking down discrepancies between the documentation of a part and the received part.

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Fiber Laser Gives DIY PCBs A Professional Finish

April 7, 2025 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

While low-cost professional PCB fabrication has largely supplanted making circuit boards at home, there’s still something to be said for being able to go from design to prototype in an afternoon. Luckily we aren’t limited to the old toner transfer trick for DIY boards these days, as CNC routers and powerful lasers can be used to etch boards quickly and accurately.

But there’s still a problem — those methods leave you with a board that has exposed traces. That might work in a pinch for a one-off, but such boards are prone to shorts, and frankly just don’t look very good. Which is why [Mikey Sklar] has been experimenting with applying both a soldermask and silkscreen to his homemade boards.

The process he describes starts after the board has already been etched. First he rolls on the soldermask, and then sandwiches the board between layers of transparency film and clear acrylic before curing it under a UV light. After two coats of the soldermask, the board goes into a fiber laser and the silkscreen and mask layers are loaded into the software and the machine is set to a relatively low power (here, 40%). The trick is that the mask layer is set to run four times versus the single run of the silkscreen, which ensures that the copper is fully exposed.

Since the board doesn’t need to be moved between operations, you don’t have to worry about the registration being off. The end result really does look quite nice, with the silkscreen especially popping visually a lot more than we would have assumed.

We’ve previously covered how [Mikey] uses his CNC router and fiber laser to cut out and etch the boards, so this latest installment brings the whole thing full circle. The equipment you’ll need to follow along at home isn’t cheap, but we can’t argue with the final results.

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Reverse Engineering The IBM PC110, One PCB At A Time

April 6, 2025 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

There’s a dedicated group of users out there that aren’t ready to let their beloved IBM PC110 go to that Great Big Data Center in the Sky. Unfortunately, between the limited available technical information and rarity of replacement parts, repairing the diminutive palmtops can be tricky.

Which is why [Ahmad Byagowi] has started a project that aims to not only collect all the available schematics and datasheets that pertain to the machine, but to reverse engineer all of the computer’s original circuit boards. Working from optical and x-ray scans, the project has already recreated the motherboard, power supply, modem, keyboard, and RAM module PCBs in KiCad.

Just last week the project released production-ready Gerbers for all the boards, but considering there have been 45+ commits to the repository since then, we’re going to assume they weren’t quite finalized. Of course, with a project of this magnitude, you’d expect it to take a few revisions to get everything right. (Hell, we’ve managed to screw up board layouts that had fewer than a dozen components on them.)

If you’d like to lend a hand, [Ahmad] says he could use the help. Beyond checking the boards for problems and reporting issues, he’s also on the hunt for any datasheets or other documentation that can be found for the PC110 or its components. It looks like there’s still schematic work that needs to be done as well, so if your idea of zen is figuring out how ~30 year old computers were wired up internally, this might be the perfect summer project for you.

Interestingly, our very own [Arya Voronova] has been working on creating a drop-in replacement motherboard for the Sony Vaio P using KiCad and imported board images. That hobbyists are now able to do this kind of work using free and open source tools is a reminder of just how far things have come in the last few years.

Thanks to [adistuder] for the tip.

First PCB With The Smallest MCU?

April 4, 2025 by Elliot Williams 31 Comments

[Morten] works very fast. He has already designed, fabbed, populated, and tested a breakout board for the new tiniest microcontroller on the market, and he’s even made a video about it, embedded below.

You might have heard about this new TI ARM Cortex MO micro on these very pages, where we asked you what you’d do with this grain-of-rice-sized chunk of thinking sand. (The number one answer was “sneeze and lose it in the carpet”.)

From the video, it looks like [Morten] would design a breakout board using Kicad 8, populate it, get it blinking, and then use its I2C lines to make a simple digital thermometer demo. In the video, he shows how he worked with the part, from making a custom footprint to spending quite a while nudging it into place before soldering it carefully down.

But he nailed it on the first try, and honestly it doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as we’d feared, mostly because of the two-row layout of the balls. It actually looks easy enough to fan out. Because you can’t inspect the soldering work underneath the chip, he broke out all of the lines to a header to make it quick to check for shorts between those tiny little balls. Smart.

We love to see people trying out the newest hotness. Let us know down in the comments what new parts you’re trying out.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 314: It’s Pi, But Also PCBs In Living Color And Ultrasonic Everything

March 28, 2025 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

It might not be Pi Day anymore, but Elliot and Dan got together for the approximately 100*Pi-th episode of the Podcast to run through the week’s coolest hacks. Ultrasound seemed to be one of the themes, with a deep dive into finding bugs with sonar as well as using sound to cut the cheese — and cakes and pies, too.

The aesthetics of PCBs were much on our minds, too, from full-color graphics on demand to glow-in-the-dark silkscreens. Is automation really needed to embed fiber optics in concrete? Absolutely! How do you put plasma in a bottle? Apparently, with kombucha, Nichrome, and silicone. If you need to manage your M:TG cards, scribble on the walls, or build a mechanical chase light, we’ve got the details. And what exactly is a supercomputer? We can’t define it, but we know one when we see it.

Download the zero-calorie MP3.

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Supercon 2024: A New World Of Full-Color PCBs

March 26, 2025 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Printed circuit boards were once so simple. One or two layers of copper etched on a rectangular fiberglass substrate, with a few holes drilled in key locations so components could be soldered into place. They were functional objects, nothing more—built only for the sake of the circuit itself.

Fast forward to today, and so much has changed. Boards sprout so many layers, often more than 10, and all kinds of fancy geometric features for purposes both practical and pretty. But what catches they eye more than that, other than rich, saturated color? [Joseph Long] came to the 2024 Hackaday Supercon to educate us on the new world of full color PCBs.

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