Another approach

While exploring the wondrous world of Amicus, Arduino, et al (which I became aware of only a week or two back), I came upon this rather interesting Arduino compatible. There is a link to a user manual with pinouts and a schematic. It was of special interest to me because I want to create a development board for ZBasic who use both 28 (Mega328P) and 40 pin (Mega644P) AVR chips - and I plan to shamelessly copy much of this one. :p Although, to keep the cost to a minimum, I'll use a serial link (DB9) and external 5V or 3V3 power supply and a socket for the two crystals needed for the two voltages.

I would think a similar board for PICs might be of interest. Since I seldom use anything but 8-pin PICs (and an occasional 16F88) I have no plans to design one but I have pointed this out to the Xino folks. Maybe Lester will see this, if he was unaware of this, and consider an Amicus version as well. :p

I've done a layout for DIP-28 but combining the two appears to require multiple layers which adds too much cost. I'm trying to keep these as bare bones as possible to keep the cost down. I'll do a separate DIP-40 version later.

I've finished designing Main boards that are Arduino form-factor and pin-compatible for DIP-24 and DIP-28 as well as one for DIP-40. The latter is pin-compatible except for added pins not present on the Arduino. My interest was to support ZBasic but the DIP-24 version will also support BasicX (BX-24) as well as BasicStamp2.

All use a simple serial interface and require an external SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supply) as I wanted to minimize cost. The DIP-28 & DIP-40 versions include a 64KB SPI EEPROM (ST M95512).

There are ZIP files containing JPGs of the boards on my web site.
DIP-28

The DIP-28 board can be 3V3 or 5V and has a socket for the crystal so it can use 7.3728, 14.7456 or 16MHz crystals. The first two are for 3V3 (ZX-328l) and 5V (ZX-328n). 16MHz is for Arduino - SparkFun sells an ATmega328 with the Arduino bootloader pre-installed.

I have not explored the Amicus18 pin-out but I understand it is not 100% pin-compatible with the Arduino so do not know whether these boards can be used with Amicus18 shields but they might serve as a pattern for anyone wanting a DIP-40 Amicus18. I will release the designs and Gerber files as Public Domain once I've been able to test them (3-4 weeks away).

There are ZIP files with JPGs on my web site - DIP-24 DIP-28 DIP-40