> AT89C2051 This damn chip will never die, will it? Both projects seem simple enough to make with your own KiCAD custom board, and with Digikey Red at just $5

> AT89C2051 This damn chip will never die, will it? Both projects seem simple enough to make with your own KiCAD custom board, and with Digikey Red at just $5 for small boards, and with modern miniature parts (wow, lots of big through hole stuff in this kit), it's probably cheaper than you think to make your own custom parts. I think these days, I'd make a surface mount beginner board with SOIC (relatively large surface mount) chips and maybe 0805 (imperial) resistors. Modern electronics are often with much smaller parts like BGA or VQFN leadless and 0201 resistors. But staying with larger SOIC (half the size of DIPs) is still fine enough for beginners and surface mount skills probably are more important today. ------------- It probably should be noted that 4-character LED modules are cheap and common. This project uses 3x 2-character LED modules to display "hours:minutes:seconds", but I think the typical "hours:minutes" display is easier given off-the-shelf equipment.