A4983 Breakout Board

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Please see the Pololu stepper driver board for a newer version (e.g. A4988).

The Allegro A4983 microstepping stepper motor driver chip is used in many RepRaps and RepStraps. It is used in many of the so-called "Official Electronics".

See StepperMotor for a table comparing the A4983 chip itself to alternative chips, and a big table comparing the Pololu A4983 breakout board to alternative stepper motor driver boards.

Most people buy it already soldered to a breakout board, which makes it act like a single easy-to-connect-to DIP chip that handles things that required 2 or 3 chips and a fistful of discrete components in earlier times.

RepRap electronics using the Pololu A4983 breakout board include: Huxley#Steppers, Pololu Extruder Stripboard, Pololu Electronics, Erik's Ultimaker's v1.1 PCB, UBW32 Blue Banana Electronics, RAMPS .

Alas, the A4983 chip itself comes in a "28-VFQFN Exposed Pad" package, which many people prefer not to deal with directly. It's even more difficult to deal with than the TSSOP package that we abandoned after the Stepper Motor Driver 2.1 fiasco :-). Nevertheless, a few brave souls design RepRap electronics using the bare A4983 chip without a breakout board: Generation 8 Electronics, ... is that the only one?

Is any other breakout board available for this chip? Did the following files ever exist ?:

Or, as seems likely, were they merely placeholders?