Cees Meijer
After finishing the schematic, it's time to start the PCB layout. First this requires some decisions on what component shapes to use. All the ICs are easy, these are just standard DIP packages. The capacitors are all ceramic discs, but with a 5mm pitch, where 2.54 is more common these days. Resistors are all good, old-fashioned standards 0.25 W radials with a 10 mm pitch.
For the 3.5 mm jacks that connect the power and the tape recorder I chose a model that's available at almost every electronics shop. (Sparkfun sells it as '3.5 mm Audio Jack'). And for the RF or Video out a very standard RCA jack will do
(UPDATE 2020: The RCA jack in the image is actually obsolete. Something I only noticed after ordering my PCB. And surprise: it's also a model and pin-out that is extremely uncommon... )
And finally the switches, which I already decided to be the the 'mini tactile switch, 6x6x5'.
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Definitely try free routing! Much better than the KiCAD auto router.
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As I want to follow the original traces as much as possible, this is is definitely going to be a manual routing job. And hey, it's a hobby project , so time is not important...
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Wow, that's a huge one. Having done a few smaller projects (<100x100mm) with pcbnew and freeRouting, I can say that I spent far far more time tuning the placement of the chips to reduce the trace lengths and the number of vias. Eventually you will find an arrangement of chips that makes the most sense in terms of signal flow.
I've updated my page about freeRouting here: https://hackaday.io/page/6082-using-freerouting-with-kicad-5
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I will follow placement and routing as close as possible to the original, so I do not have to think about that too much.
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Good idea. You could go halfway, use the original component positions and let openRouting do the routing. It'll probaby do at least as well as the original.
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