Not really wanting to do something that's already been done before, and wanting to justify my purchase of a stereo microscope and REAL NICE JBC soldering iron, I decided to try to build one of these using SMT components.
I had some luck hand-soldering a teensy tiny LED to a teensy tiny SMT resistor and some wire when I made a set of lights for a teensy tiny bonsai tree.
So what the heck, why not jump off the cliff and see if I can build a parachute on the way down?
It could be a massive public failure (80% likely) It could be a partial success (10%) or it could be a complete success (0.1%)
After moving things around and building test circuits for just about forever, I think I've finally got a layout I can live with.
I suppose I should put the binary files on GitHub or something.
In the mean time, here's the schematic and layout for one flipflop.
The white lines are "air" wired that will be magnet wire. They are things like ground +9V0 and some other signals that I couldn't get routed perfectly. I also will wire up an input signal and two output signals.
I like having the central "spine" of 10 parts and the two "leave" segments of three parts each separated by wires.
When I connected them all together "hard" the unit was too fragile.
I'm going to rig up a wire structure that I can glue the three parts to to hold them together securely.
I got a chance to power-up the first divide-by-two and it actually works!
I've got both output wires soldered on the wrong place, but when I scope the right place, I can see it flipping and flopping! Top trace is a 9V 60Hz signal from the signal generator. Lower trace is one end of the divide-by-two running at 30Hz just as expected. The amplitude isn't right since I've got the wire on the wrong place, but it's working.
Here's the monster wire-nest of testing:
Here's a three-trace image showing the input at 60HZ, the normal output at 30HZ and the inverted output at 30HZ:
Sorry about the photo quality. I'll do better in the future.
With all the darn SNOW here in Cambridge, I haven't been able to get to my lab at Artisan's Asylum, and I'm just buzzing waiting to get back to finish and test the first divide-by-two unit.
I fFigured I could improve my 5mW laser pointer by removing the PCB https://i.imgur.com/lWYO0YY.gif