New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Help & news on accelerators from TF, Amiga, Atari, CD32 etc

Moderators: terriblefire, Terriblefire Moderator

Post Reply
terriblefire
Moderator Team
Moderator Team
Posts: 5368
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:56 pm
Location: Glasgow, UK

New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by terriblefire »

As you all know... I never like to see hardware designers getting kicked for what they do. However they have to behave too!

I found out this morning that these new cards (which I was looking forward to if i'm honest) were manufactured and shipped without ground planes...

https://www.p-5.eu/

See

http://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=562

http://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=689

Now this is bad enough but it does happen. As a hardware guy I can understand that mistakes happen. But how did these boards get out the front door without some checks? Its not an edge case that might have been missed.. its a MISSING GROUND PLANE.. No chip gets any ground... WTF.. did he even test these before shipping them?

Even still if you make this mistake you need to suck it up (or have insurance) and refund your customers for this sort of shit.

However this isnt what Phase5 has done.. instead they've used copyright infringement claims in youtube to SILENCE anyone from disseminating this information...

I have to ask the question.. what kind of quality control is in place here? I mean I'm a hobbist and I wouldnt dream of shipping a board I hadn't had going on a video.

Please share this as widely as possible.
———
"It is not necessarily a supply voltage at no load, but the amount of current it can provide when touched that
indicates how much hurting you shall receive."
troed
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 908
Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2017 10:27 pm

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by troed »

(I'm a friend of Hertell and can vouch for his credibility)
User avatar
exxos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 23499
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:19 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by exxos »

Wow screw ups can happen but geese... Its one thing that users can kill things, but to vaporise a entire layer would need probably a few 100 amps... Pretty sure it would be apparent there. I don't know Chucky, but its clear he has a good reputation so he should not be classed as regular Joe idiot.

Fwiw , a PCB fab in Germany made some 4 layer boards for me and only did 2 layers somehow . there was several tracks missing, so clear some fab houses do zero checks. I always build up a few boards and make sure they all work before I sell anything, aside from known risk projects like the stf remake which is a community funded project.

I don't see what the big problem would be in send out chucky some new PCBs as if they were returned then they can be tested and verified faulty. But to say someone killed a entire layer is a bit much... If there was a bad via which can happen, I'm sure chucky would have just mentioned the issue and done a bodge wire. But again, even dumb luck would have at least 1 good gnd somewhere..
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
terriblefire
Moderator Team
Moderator Team
Posts: 5368
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:56 pm
Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by terriblefire »

Yup. But to do this



Just to stop people talking about it...

ChuckyGang is responsible for writing DiagRom, Re1200 (Amiga 1200 remake) and the A3660 board remake. Without him I wouldnt be doing what I do.
———
"It is not necessarily a supply voltage at no load, but the amount of current it can provide when touched that
indicates how much hurting you shall receive."
User avatar
exxos
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 23499
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:19 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by exxos »

Video not found...
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
terriblefire
Moderator Team
Moderator Team
Posts: 5368
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:56 pm
Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by terriblefire »

exxos wrote: Sat Dec 29, 2018 5:55 pmVideo not found...
Precisely
bastards.JPG
bastards.JPG (24.87 KiB) Viewed 5500 times
———
"It is not necessarily a supply voltage at no load, but the amount of current it can provide when touched that
indicates how much hurting you shall receive."
User avatar
kludge
Posts: 393
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2018 2:05 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by kludge »

Does the Phase5 dude even have any rights to the boards himself? It should be possible to take him down somehow. He’s a danger to himself and to others, damnit.

(I also know Chucky somewhat... From FB and Messenger. And he repaired my A4k that had quite a lot of battery leakage. He didn’t remove the ground plane on that one at least ;))

#FreeChuckyGang
A kludge is a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain.

My lack of focus:
[ 4 * Amiga 500 ][ Amiga 500+ ][ 2 * Amiga 600 ][ A1200 ][ Amiga 2000 w/ A2386 ][ Amiga 4000/030 w/ CyberVision 64 3D, FastLane SCSI Z3 ][ CD32 ][ VIC-20 ][ 4 * C64 Breadbin ][ 5 * C64C ][ 2 * C128 ][ C128D ][ C64 DTV ][ Mac Classic ][ Mac Classic II ][ Mac Colour Classic ]
terriblefire
Moderator Team
Moderator Team
Posts: 5368
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 10:56 pm
Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: New Phase5 Digital PPC Boards have NO GROUND PLANE

Post by terriblefire »

I doubt it.

I think this guy is just delusional. The "investment" he talks about is just that he's bought all the PPCs out there.

Thing is... nobody wants PPC Amigas. Or if they do they'd happily have one in a PCI card hanging off the bus like the network card jobs.

Add on to this that there are about 2000 active amiga users out there and you are insane to build high end cards as a business model. Especially with Vampire out there already. All they have to do is use an FPGA with a PPC built in and he's history. He's never going to make a single sale.

Add on top of this that I'll probably do an open source 060 at some point..
———
"It is not necessarily a supply voltage at no load, but the amount of current it can provide when touched that
indicates how much hurting you shall receive."
Post Reply

Return to “Terriblefire's channel”