On schematics, generally.
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But, on topic- Reverant's comment inasmuch as "the CPU board is not generally repairable," while true, misses the point entirely. For the average* user, the value of the schematics is not that they allow you to repair the CPU board, but they they enable you to design & modify supporting circuits which surround the CPU board. Without the schematics, you're left guessing as to how pins on the DIP-40 and header connections interface with the CPU itself.
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From: Fake Virginia
The hardest part was putting the boot loader back on... which is definitely something I couldn't do myself.
However it does help to live within a short drive of a megasquirt developer.
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From: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
B&G aren't gaining any added security by refusing to release the board schematic, they're just making life annoying for advanced end-users.
I could draw a parallel to handgun laws in the US, but I don't want to drift the thread. We already have a thread for that.
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I'd love to.
When I designed and built the Hellasquirt board* years ago, I had a copy of the Motorola technical manual for the 68HC908 on my desk, so that I could see exactly how all of the various IO pins worked. Yes, I could have backwards-engineered this info from looking at the 3.0 PCA schematic, but there are so many badly-designed circuits on there that I wanted to be sure I had the best data available right from the source.
The fact that there are active and passive components on the MS3 CPU (other than the CPU itself) means you can't make blind assumptions about how the pins on the actual processor itself are connected to the DIP40 and header connectors.
When I designed and built the Hellasquirt board* years ago, I had a copy of the Motorola technical manual for the 68HC908 on my desk, so that I could see exactly how all of the various IO pins worked. Yes, I could have backwards-engineered this info from looking at the 3.0 PCA schematic, but there are so many badly-designed circuits on there that I wanted to be sure I had the best data available right from the source.
The fact that there are active and passive components on the MS3 CPU (other than the CPU itself) means you can't make blind assumptions about how the pins on the actual processor itself are connected to the DIP40 and header connectors.
* = Yes, I realize that this makes me one of the counterfitters that B&G are so concerned about. I built this board for recreational purposes, only made one of them, and removed it from the car before I sold it. I still have it in a box somewhere.
1) FT232RL USB-to-serial conversion
2) SD Card datalogging
3) IAC stepper driver
4) CAN driver
And that's about it. There's nothing magical about it. I would literally not need the schematics to design a mainboard if I had the info above 3 years ago.
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