Always get a kick out of seeing products that I designed and built a long time ago turned up in the wild. This printed circuit board (PCB) was the 3rd revision of a design that had its origins in the late 1980s and was tidied up and manufactured in Australia in 2003.

In 2008 I was approached by the developers of a Commodore 64 game called Kikstart 2, and they wanted to put this game on a cartridge and sell it to the retro computer community. I helped burn the EEPROM and tested it, ensuring it would work, eventually supplying several PCBs, cartridge plastic cases, and clamshell plastic packaging, and shipped them to the UK.

Fast forward 14 years, I noticed a collector from Switzerland mentioning his newest addition on Twitter. He included a few photos of the cartridge game opened displaying the Kikstart EEPROM and the PCB in the tweet.

I tweeted back, mentioning that I designed and manufactured those PCBs, and if he would turn them over, he’d see Alphaworks on the back.

“Yes, you’re right; it’s an Alphaworks PCB. And what a beauty! 🙂 No unnecessary vias, straight up routing and an overall very clean layout. Congrats on that.”

It’s always good to see your products in the wild, particularly many years after they left the production line, and most of all, they are still being enjoyed by those who own and use them.