Building Beautiful Things, RC2014 Mini II Picasso Ltd Edition

 

As a prelude to this post, I've stopped working, after a long time, for Tindie. No big story and you should definitely still browse and buy there. Other work and other commitments have taken priority and something had to give. I mention this as the kit in this post is an RC2014 product, if you don't know they make a range of retro computing Z80 kits. Not only that they have also spawned a load of add ons by all manner of makers. I know Spencer at RC2014 and so whenever I wrote up either a RC2014 product, or a product linked to RC2014 I had to declare an interest to my Tindie editor! So writing this post will feel unencumbered!

So yep, it's a GORGEOUS kit. These Mini II Picasso are a limited edition run and each individual kit will indeed be individual with no 2 having the same combination of PCB colour, silkscreen, LED colour, header colours etc. The kit is electronically the same as  Mini II but obviously the layout and design is spectacular. It's really nicely designed, oh, and it isn't rectangular! It's kind of shaped like a pint glass but it's hard to photo as it just looks like weird perspective. In case you don't know once built this kit can be run in a few different ways. The easiest is to grab an FTDI USB cable, hook it up and connect to this using a serial monitor, putty/minicom etc. Then, with some judicial placing of headers, you can boot into numerous environments, Microsoft Basic, CPM, CamelForth and more!

Back to the build though. The peculiarity doesn't stop at the weird shaped board and colours. There's some interesting techniques in this fun kit, some I have never done before like the sunken chip which uses a weird underside surface mount approach that is pure Picasso! Everything is a jaunty angle and yes those radial resistor arrays do have a shared hole! It really is fun, and actually no more complex than any other kit. It's supplied with a lovely lasercut set of upper and lower panels and indeed the upper panel has two choices one with access to the header sockets. I think it would be a slight challenge as a first soldering attempt, but as a second or third kit for someone it's very doable, with great instructions and there's a superb community of users online. If you fancy joining in go have a peruse of https://z80kits.com/shop/rc2014-mini-ii-picasso/