Fantastic kit, great attention to detail

This is a very complete kit, and includes details like LED spacers, an insulating pad for the crystal, and a red push button for reset. For my build, I used machined pin DIP sockets instead of the stamped sockets included in the kit. It worked on the first power up, booting right up into the CP/M. I really like the ROM and I/O emulation using the microcontroller, it is a very clean and extensible design.<br /> <br /> I also built the V20-MBC and had a similar positive experience. As a result, I just ordered the 68K-MBC and look forward to building and experimenting with it.

Great kit, highly recommended

Fast shipping with tracking, good packaging, everything included (even battery and SD card ready to use). Easy to assemble, but if this is your very first kit, take the time to study which components go where.<br /> Having a picture of the finalized board on screen while working is helpful.<br /> Several nice OS options on the included SD card gets you started right away.<br /> My system worked perfectly from first power-on.<br /> The SD card "disk" system is a nice replacement for floppies and winchester disks! CP/M 3 is an excellent OS for this system.<br /> I bought this kit because of the easy access to create new "ROM firmware" with the ATmega solution, rather than having to flash physical EEPROMs.<br /> Performance is as expected from an 8 MHz Z80 CP/M system. The SD card I/O is a little bit slower than similar Compact Flash-card solutions used in other Z80 SBCs - but nothing to worry about! It is still *way* faster than the 8" floppies used in 1979 :)<br /> Highly recommended kit, excellent quality.

My first soldering project - Good kit

It is my first soldering project. I took the time to solder each item.<br /> It took half a day. but it worked on my first power-on.<br /> <br /> I have not used serial communication since college. Kind of refreshing to use legacy technology. <br /> <br /> I will play with this Z80-MBC2. I have ordered v20 version too.<br /> <br /> thanks.<br /> <br />

A great product and excellent support

I received the kit to assemble a couple of weeks ago and I started soldering right away. After about 3 hours of work, connected the board to PC with the supplied USB - Serial cable and .... nothing. I've contacted support right away and they were very responsive and help me diagnose the issue. Eventually we concluded that the AVR has, somehow, lost it's content and the support sent me a replacement AVR that worked out of the box. In the meantime I was able to burn the bootloader to the original AVR as well, using the ICP port and a Pololu USB AVR programmer.<br /> It is a great product for anyone interested to learn more about the basics of CPU's, memory and early operating systems. I am particularly interested in CP/M and Collapse OS so the fun is just starting. <br /> Very good delivery, the kit arrived in 6 days in Romania. Excellent packaging, with great attention to antistatic measures for the IC's. Assembly requires a little bit of attention, there is no assembly manual, but the schematic and BOM are really helpful. <br /> Big thumb up for support and for the patience of Mr. Giovanni. Thank you very much!