Episode 03 - The Board

The Base Board (I)

As I wanted to fit a lot of tiny components inside the shell, I decided to purchase a perfboard.

I bought the biggest one available because my initial intention was to roughly replicate the original DMG-01 CPU board shape.

I began with the design phase: a piece of paper 🤣

Folded and cut to match the inner dimensions of the shell:

Marking the screw locations:

And checking how it fit onto the perfboard:

Using my reMarkable tablet, I sketched a few possible layouts:

Later on, those designs were proven to be almost completely useless… but at this stage they helped me imagine the final component placement.

Using my Dremel, I cut the perfboard and checked if it actually fit inside the shell:

Then I added the screw locations using a permanent marker:

And finally, one more fitting test with some screws in place:

To be honest, the final shape of the baseboard ended up being completely different from the original idea.

Version 2 of this board is radically different and — hopefully — far more efficient and cheaper, mainly because it allowed me to use a much smaller perfboard.

Related Documentation

• Baseboard Schematics (PDF)
• Baseboard Schematics SVG:
  • page 1
  • page 2
  • page 3
  • page 4