The last post in my series on retrocomputing covered the testing of my repaired CGA with the Micro 8088. The process of troubleshooting took several weeks, and it became apparent that a handy piece of hardware to have would be an ISA “POST Card“. This type of card is designed to display a series of diagnostic codes that are generated by the BIOS as it reaches certain milestones in its execution. This would have been very handy to have as a means of verifying if the Micro 8088 is functioning normally and executing BIOS code.
It is possible to buy an ISA POST card off eBay, but in the back of my mind I am wanting to learn how to use the KiCad software package to design and produce circuit boards. This may be the perfect excuse to design a POST card using KiCad, and do a whole lot of learning along the way.