Memory Board Update, Beginning of Layout

i have finally removed my attention from PCI, PIC32 and My Professional Portfolio website development, to begin the layout of my Memory Board. Remember that project?

Well, i just dumped everything to PCBnew in KiCAD and started organizing the components. There are 280 capacitors on this board, to give you an idea of how massive an undertaking it is.

One thing i found: another bug with KiCAD! If you create a "multi-part" component (say one of four components, each with 25 pins, labelled A, B, C and D in the schematic) you would think that KiCAD should map the multiple schematic symbol to the single PCB footprint if the pin count is correct. Well, it doesn't, but i could be doing it wrong.

So, i had to go back and recreate the schematic component as a single monolithic part (this is the Hirose FX2 connector, 100-pins). Anyway, after some tweaking of the schematic, component-to-footprint mapping, and updating the board file, i am finally done organizing the PCB. Now to actually LAYOUT the board.

Here's a snapshot of all the components and the respective rats nest.

There are six 16Mb DRAM chips and four 1Mb SRAM chips on this board, with a whole bunch of MUXing junk to branch a single 16b Addr and 8b Data bus to the multiple parts.

Stay tuned.....