Hi guys,
let me announce a little Open Hardware / Open-Source electronics and PCB design project I have finished recently: openbiosprog-spi, a small USB-based programmer hardware for SPI BIOS chips as found in recent mainboards, network cards, graphics cards, and other stuff.
The user-space source code is part of
flashrom (GPL, version 2), the schematics and PCB layouts are licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license and were created using the open-source
Kicad EDA suite (GPL, version 2). Nope, no Eagle for me as I don't use closed-source software, kthxbye.
The main use-case of the device is to help you recover easily from a failed BIOS upgrade (either due to using an incorrect BIOS image, due to power outages during the flashing process, or whatever). The device only supports SPI chips, as used in recent mainboards (in DIP-8 form factor, or via manual wiring possibly also soldered-in SO-8 variants). It can identify, read, erase, or write the chips.
The device uses the FTDI FT2232H chip as basis for USB as well as for handling the actual SPI protocol in hardware (MPSSE engine of the FT2232H). The PCBs are 44mm x 20mm in size, 2 layer, 8 mil traces, 0603 SMD components on both sides.
I have put up a lot more photos and information such as the bill of materials, the Kicad settings I used for creating the PCBs, the Gerber files and the Excellon drill files etc. on the main projects page:
http://randomprojects.org/wiki/Openbiosprog-spiSome more info is also available in
my blog post about openbiosprog-spi.
Note that this is my first "real" electronics project, and also my first Kicad project (and I'm quite happy with Kicad btw). So if you spot any stupid mistakes I have made in the schematics or layout, please let me know.
Uwe.