Steve Wozniak on PC board design

“Electronic products these days are based on chips with hundreds of connectors. Connecting them can involve hundreds of wires. A PC board is an inexpensive way to connect all the wires at once. When Steve Jobs and I started, with a blue box and then the Apple I and Apple II computers, I did the digital design, connecting hundreds of wires myself on the prototypes. Steve Jobs took the role of getting PC boards made so that we could manufacture sellable products.

After a short while we had outside companies create the PC boards according to my designs. I was extremely proud of one design that far exceeded what had been done before. That was a floppy disk interface card so you could attach a disk and type “Run Checkbook” to run the Checkbook program, rather than finding a cassette tape labeled ‘Checkbook’ and then playing it on a cassette tape player into the computer. I was super proud of my floppy disk controller board, with 8 chips rather than the normal 50 chips.

I wanted the PC board for this floppy disk controller to get done quickly but the company that made our PC boards was busy. So I set up a drafting table with mylar sheets and patterns that I could lay out myself, every night for a couple of weeks. I was in charge of the entire project, PC board and all. I was the last one to leave Apple every night for those weeks.

At the end I had a very tiny number of holes connecting the top of my PC board layout to the bottom. It was a tiny number of holes because I’d planned the layout of where the 8 chips went in order to minimize single crossovers, which required holes. But I then realized that if I’d designed a part to shift bits the other way, like from right to left instead of left to right, everything would work but I’d have fewer holes.

I stripped all my PC board layout and started over, for the next week or two, laying out my PC board according to my new, reversed, design. In the end I had only 5 holes in the PC board connecting from the top to the bottom sides. Nobody would ever know that I’d done that. It was my private perfection.

I realized that, in my head, this PC board represented myself, and that’s how perfect (as can be) I was. When you care, it’s not about money. It’s about yourself and your ability and your desire to do as good a job as possible.

I’m so glad that young people can create things like PC boards online. May your creativity have no limits!”

- Steve Wozniak

This quote is part of Hack Club's OnBoard project, where we are funding $100 in PCB manufacturing costs for 1,000 high school students over the next year.

You can learn more at https://hackclub.com/onboard/, see people's projects at https://github.com/hackclub/onboard/, and make a tax-deductible donation at https://bank.hackclub.com/donations/start/onboard (every $150 funds 2-3 projects for a teenager).