Now that I have a backplane into which to plug cards, the next step is to create some cards.

I paused for a few weeks thinking of how to approach this. Something I came across while looking for an ISA backplane are these ISA prototyping cards. I bought them on EBay for a couple of dollars each.

ISA ProtoBoard

ISA ProtoBoard With pin headers and a breadboard.

I soldered pin headers to the bottom of the board and then put a small breadboard on instead of trying to wire wrap anything.

CPU on the proto board

Here is a MC6802 on the proto board. No address/data bus hooked up yet, just testing the power from the bus.

Functional MC6802 CPU on proto board

I used this card for the entire development of all other cards. I didn't yet know exactly what additional functions the cpu card may have to perform. Because of that, it will remain on a proto board until most of the other cards are developed and made into a pcb.

Blue wires are the address bus, yellow wires the data bus. The oversized blue button is the reset button.

A drawback from using these cards is that they occupy two slots in the backplane. The wires stick out just far enough to not allow another card to be plugged in front of it. Besides, even if you could plug another card in front, you most likely wouldn't because you need access to the card to hook up the scope probes.

--> Making the first ISA board pcb

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