Magic of Myth ( MoM ) Luke RotJ Hero ( cave build ) lightsaber research, images, reference, & collaborative model builder's discussion.

corliss1, I'm not sure what you mean... If you cut the board together with the chip roughly like that (legs are cut on the left side to make space for the switch)
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then you paint the chip with some wihte paint and add brass on top. Then add other pieces of green pcb on top of the board and one blue pcb below at the right side and basically that is.
 
How about this - here's the main reference we're playing with:

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It seems more likely that the chip itself is damaged somehow than there to be white paint and brass on it, right? I'm just trying to come up with a reason for the white/brass being on top of it.
 
This hasn't really been posted in this detail

It just hit me today that there are lots of shadows all over this board. I traced them and now this is what I see. I think they used the copper death star pieces to hide part of the seam line
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The blue is the board on top of the yellow. Makes me wonder, because this would leave even less room for the circuit inside
 
How about this - here's the main reference we're playing with:

View attachment 1478807

It seems more likely that the chip itself is damaged somehow than there to be white paint and brass on it, right? I'm just trying to come up with a reason for the white/brass being on top of it.
Most of the chips have serial numbers/ manufacturers data etc on it.
If the props department was directed to assemble a reveal with the option of doing a *close-up* I guarantee you they painted over and covered any markings that might take us out of the scene.
I have to believe that’s the case otherwise why bother dressing everything up carefully with Death Star brass like they did too if not to obscure the base components and make it look like more otherworldly electronics and not ‘radioshack’.
Whoever did that was planning on it being featured in a closeup or at least making sure it was ready for one if GL asked for it.
 
If you check the few side view pictures that exist:
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You will see that the blue board is at the bottom of the stack. Also there are 2 separate pieces with that sit on top of everything (green and blue)
There is a severed trace right where the chip legs end (red circle) and the whole circuit on the right side of this should be 1 trace per chip leg going "somewhere", while it kind of does not look like this, so maybe there's a cut end to end where the chip legs end and it is a different piece on the right side of them. I've marked also some other areas where the pieces look on top of each other or traces end abruptly.
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Ok, so I have not realized before what I was seeing there, but it is that the brass pieces are actually black on some spots.
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So where I thought I see a trace cut (red circle) it is actually one of these black brass stops and it means that the piece of pcb with the chip maybe spans the whole length of the control box and is just covered with few other pieces.

Also the black brass partially covers the white paint on the chip which makes it really look strange. So I think (considering these 2 frames) that without the brass the chip will look something like this:

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Im going to disagree there- the black is shadow- the brass is thin but has volume off the surface of the board, and considering the board has 'some' volume the brass also flexes up and down creating shadows.

Coming at it from another angle...I went through and matched each piece of brass to an existing Death Star II piece so I can tell you the black spots also definitely aren't part of those particular brass pieces.
 
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I've never seen the real thing in person, but I've seen some auction pictures and there's plenty of black brass pieces in them also some pieces fade from shiny to dark to black.

Some of it could be shadows, but I disagree that all the black spots are shadows.
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looks like what I see here :
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I see what you mean.

Going down the calculator rabbit hole I'm also starting to see some striking resemblances to individual board styles... IE substrate color saturation, soldermask, conformal coating and trace shaping.... interesting interesting
 
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These trace styles from the Sharp calculator boards (and color) seem really good, though it might be more indicative of Japanese manufacture which seemed to look like this (see Casio also)
 
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Thats so cool, checking out bits of the death star you've IDed

I traced my lines because the shadows lined up with the angle of reflection to me, and now this strange shape is a match to me, and a place where layers are exposed
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I've found that the Sharp chips are a match in size, while Toshiba chips are larger. However I find the Toshiba's boards colors and "spaghetti" traces (rather than the straight angle traces on most of the others) match very well to what I see. Something like this would be my ideal board if the chip size was correct (note how the gold key contacts align with some gold "spots" on the reveal board:

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I wonder how the last board from BRRogers post looks from the other side where the contacts are. As those small green circles look really close to the one seen on the reveal board.
 
Watch out that the board ICs should only be 11 legs per side
Yes, on the last board I've posted the chip is too big and has too many legs. I just wanted to illustrate the general layout and type of traces I was looking for.
Sharp chips like this one so far are my favorite contenders (couple of legs fell off):
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I hit a bust on a calculator at a rummage sale last week that was so old the board was brown with a green mask underneath.

are there other image sources for calc boards other than the couple museums we usually go to?
 
v312 any luck on your end with your board search?

hotter? Colder?

Personally I think there may be a mashup of 2-3 boards potentially.
I'm currently taking a break from my hobby projects for various reasons, so I haven't really looked into this since my last post. The calculator boards I got from ebay were no exact match, but looked very promising to make a nice mashup board out of them
 
Did some format updates to the top.

Might find some new tidbits in there:

Tomorrow I'm getting something vintage and fun that I'm very hopeful about regarding the Hero. :D

SethS please feel free to reference anything I've mentioned in the lightsaber Bible if it seems applicable.

If there's anything blatantly obvious and or otherwise missing (or still in deep question) up in the top let me know and I'll add in a section with what is known.
 
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