Bitgood.org

The first time I saw the Arduino, I thought to myself, "where's the ZIF socket version?" It turns out that nobody's taken the time to design a board for it yet. The typical reasoning is the desire to keep the cost to a minimum. That's an excellent point, because a ZIF socket can add 50% to the cost of the assembled board. Well, I've bent the pins on an ATMEGA-168 for the last time, dag nabbit, and I don't care what it costs any more.

I spent several hours getting to know Eagle a bit, grabbed the Freeduino sketch and board files at http://www.freeduino.org/freeduino_open_designs.html (they have a through-hole version) and started tweaking. Here are the results:

The schematic and board files

Yes, it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's just a prototype. I'll post more after I get the one-off made and put together. If this works out I'll get a bunch of boards made and sell kits.

Note: All I did was move stuff around, re-do the traces and add my name to the list of credits. If your name is on the silkscreen layer and want it off, just let me know.