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The Perils of PCBing Without a Net

A project log for TMD-3: Turing Machine Demonstrator Mark 3

They say that the third time's a charm. Let's find out.

michael-gardiMichael Gardi 08/05/2023 at 05:121 Comment

I have a confession to make. I created the state PCB for TMD-3 directly in the KiCad PCB editor without creating a schematic first. This is pretty easy to do. Of course I had to turn off DRC to accomplish thus but hey I figured I was saving myself some time. Wrong.  

I missed introducing a small trace when converting the bus connectors to standard .1 inch headers and inadvertently crossed the S2 and S3 lines. Took me a while to find the problem that a netlist and DRC would have probably caught.

Fortunately the boards could be salvaged with a delicate but doable trace cut.

Lesson learned. 

Discussions

kelvinA wrote 08/05/2023 at 09:54 point

It still sounds impressive to create a PCB without a schematic and only have 1 error.

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