Category: Learnings

  • Capacitors and their Form Factors

    News from the factory:

    Today I learned that not every capacitor capacity actually fits into every package size. 

    Yeah, yeah, I should’ve known.

    Physics and all that. It just totally slipped my mind.

    Anyway, on the board in question, there are some handy test pads, so I can just solder a capacitor on manually after the fact. Looking at the console’s mainboard, it looks like two capacitors might be affected there too…

    I’d better double-check that 😄 and tweak the design if needed.

  • What we learned so far designing a Retro Gaming Console

    It is astonishing what you can learn if you take on a project like this. Things you never thought of 🙂

    • 3D Design
    • PCB Design
    • Ordering “Batch Size 1” PCBs from China
    • The Customs Call: Making sure they know you aren’t building long-range missiles.
    • Power Routing on PCBs: Managing power traces effectively.
    • Design Rule: Never route Ground (GND) under an SD card reader.
    • Calculating Springs with ChatGPT: (And actually ordering them).
    • Hardware Bugfixing
    • Capacitors and their Form Factors