I’ve just finished assembling my VT132 standalone kit from The High Nibble. It was an enjoyable build and pushed my soldering skills with soldering the tiny pins on the ESP32 chip. Initially I had issues getting solder to flow onto the tiny pins and pads, but I changed to a thinner tip which worked well.
Here’s a look at the board as it comes in the kit. I chose the option USB keyboard option instead of the default PS/2 keyboard connector:
Starting with the ESP32 first, here’s a look at my soldering on those tiny pins. I used the liquid flux, and the ‘drag’ method to pull the solder from the pads up to the exposed connector on the chip board:
Row of resistors for the VGA connector completed, and a few of the caps:
Almost done, just need to attach the DB9 and DB25 connectors:
First power on and looking at the settings. To access the ‘Set-up’ from a regular keyboard, press Alt PrtScrn. To view the onscreen menu help press F1:
More details on using the VT132 coming up in following posts.