Making an embedded Linux computer | Hacker News Reader

Making an embedded Linux computer

hforsten.com

243 pointsthomasjames21 comments

Wow, I had mistakenly assumed that you couldn't do 0.8 mm BGAs on a hobbyist-level PCB. The solder lands are actually within recommendations.

The author mentioned that this is a test board without much hooked up. That really helps, since not every pin needs to be broken out. On a more complex design with higher pin coverage you'd need more layers to be able to route it all.

This is actually new, OSH Park has made a couple big improvements in the last year or so; it wasn't possible the last time I looked into it, and even then OSH Park was a bit of an outlier in terms of the small process sizes they could do.

I underwrite that wow also, I have fantasies about my own custom FPGA designs, looks that it could be done with garage-like resources following this workflow!

OSH Park is what I would expect form a high level board house, the 4 layer boards are 5/5mil with a good substrate as well

They're also looking at adding 6 or 8 layer boards, too.

Thank you for a clear and detailed description of your design process, especially how you made it work with basic tools and techniques.

Maybe I won't be so scared of BGA now.

I shared this from Henrik Forsten's blog. It is worth reading all his other articles, too, if you are interested in computer architecture, electronics, programming or math. He has a very wide range of interests.

Site seems overloaded, cached version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:deo-53h...

You want to add "&strip=1" to the url, or else it will still try to load resources from the downed site

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:deo-53h...

This is way too good, saved to the Wayback Machine too, just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20140713061753/http://hforsten.c...

This was also featured on hackaday http://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/an-amazing-diy-single-board-a...

So good. Highlights: toaster oven with custom controller, and learning about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBIFS for raw NAND access.

More info on the toaster oven: http://hforsten.com/toaster-oven-reflow-controller.html

Nicely done. I did not realize that OSH Park could be made to work with BGA devices. And I'm really impressed he got it into a 4 layer board rather than a 6 or 8 layer board.

Really impressed with this. More posts on Henrik's blog show that he has quite a breadth of knowledge in H/W. Quite the hacker!

Could anyone tell me what PCB/schematic software that is?

KICAD?

http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/KICAD/KiCad+EDA+Software+Su...

(from the submitted site, clicky the cct diagram to get a PDF, in lower right corner KICAD is mentioned)

It's definitely KICAD— I've had a good experience with it. The OS X port has some nasty crashing bugs, unfortunately, and the library management leaves a lot to be desired. But for basic boards, it's terrific.

How difficult would it be to add 1 or (better) 2 Ethernets to this?

(commenting to be able to find this later.)

One is pretty simple (you just need an Ethernet PHY and a connector with magnetics built in (or connector + separate magnetic transformer).

Two would be harder, because the chip only has one Ethernet MAC built in. You'd need another controller chip and a fair bit of supporting circuitry. But it could be done.

awesome, how much does it cost totally?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com