How hard is it to find old arduinos? (Serial RS232)

[u/benjaminsantiago]

How can I find old Arduino Serials (pre usb port)? The Duemilanove is the earliest I have because I learned from the Physical Computing book that still used the PIC 18F452 (? Can’t remember the exact number). I was in undergrad and this was stuff I picked up myself and from stalking the ITP blogs.

I’m interested in owning older models for historical purposes. I tried to search eBay but “arduino serial” is not really helpful. I also assumed they were mass produced enough as to be easy to find but a lot of old arduino info seems to kind of disappear.

I might, in theory be separated by a couple of degrees from people at ITP or similar who might know but this isn’t a real project I’m pursuing yet, mostly hoping to just happen upon a few old ones on eBay or bugging folks on forums. Any help is appreciated.

[u/tronixlabs]

Fire up KiCAD and make some reproductions maybe.

[u/benjaminsantiago → u/tronixlabs]

Yeah i would like to acid etch one by hand at some point but want to own a historical one.

[u/magus_minor → u/benjaminsantiago]

If you want to make reproductions of older boards this could be useful, if you haven't already seen it:

https://docs.arduino.cc/retired/

For example, a serial board is:

https://docs.arduino.cc/retired/boards/arduino-serial/

I wouldn't hand-etch a reproduction as the Eagle CAD files are available and professionally made PCBs are cheap.

[u/gm310509]

Have you tried contacting Arduino Pty Ltd directly?

Maybe they have some old inventory that they would be happy to sell to you.

[u/benjaminsantiago → u/gm310509]

No sounds like a cool idea though thank you

[u/gm310509 → u/benjaminsantiago]

No worries.

Another possibility is yard sales. I've occasionally seen from people who frequent yard sales and sometimes find a treasure trove of "old junk" that includes (usually a deceased person's) a collection of these types of things.

It sounds like hard work, but equally, your request for old electronics isn't all that common, so you will likely need to have strong perseverance and persistence! :-)

[u/tanoshimi]

Like this one they have one in the Deutches Museum?

[u/michael9dk → u/tanoshimi]

There is a search-hint in the picture: AtMega8

[u/tanoshimi → u/michael9dk]

Yes, that's the IC used on this board.

You'll also see it's designed by Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles.

[u/benjaminsantiago → u/michael9dk]

I was searching on ebay (I've found old processors or EPROMs this way), but just either get the mu itself, or programmers for it. "arduino" + "Atmega8" just gives a bunch of arduino copies. That's part of why I thought to ask here.

[u/swisstraeng]

why arduinos and not any microcontrollers or devboards?

[u/gm310509 → u/swisstraeng]

I guess because:

I’m interested in owning older models for historical purposes.

[u/benjaminsantiago → u/swisstraeng]

Mostly interesting in having a through hole component version of the arduino board. Just reminds me of an exciting time. I have some other specific microcontrollers I was looking to acquire (z80, 68000, etc) this is another item on the list.

[u/swisstraeng → u/benjaminsantiago]

the AtMega328P on some arduino Uno is through hole, DIN package if you're interested. The USB stuff is handled by a bootloader, you can use a 2nd arduino as an ISP programmer to use the 328p as a standalone uC.

For the 68000 I got the Ti-89 Titanium HW4 calculator.

[u/lasskinn → u/swisstraeng]

Finding socketed 328p arduinos with usb isn't that hard still. I've never even seen pics of one that had just a serial port though on the board