From: pmxtow@merlot.uucp (Thomas Womack) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: State of the PCB world Date: 10 Dec 2002 13:23:26 GMT Organization: Maths Dept., Nottingham University, UK. Lines: 38 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: merlot.maths.nott.ac.uk X-Trace: oyez.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk 1039526606 20758 128.243.50.16 (10 Dec 2002 13:23:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nottingham.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Dec 2002 13:23:26 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!fr.usenet-edu.net!usenet-edu.net!wanadoo.fr!proxad.net!peer1.news.newnet.co.uk!news-peer.gradwell.net!news-peer-lilac.gradwell.net!80.71.0.131.MISMATCH!caladan!news.mathie.cx!nntphost.dur.ac.uk!server5.netnews.ja.net!news.nott.ac.uk!news.nottingham.ac.uk!merlot!pmxtow Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:23885 This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug into an ISA slot on a PC. Nowadays, passive components are little flecks of ceramic with solder pads at each end, small ICs come in tiny flat-packs with centipede fringes of legs around, and the interesting ones come either in large flat-packs with centipede fringes, or in BGA form. And I presume the signal-integrity requirements are such that bread-board, and even the two-layer PCB, are Right Out. The BBC Micro and the ISA slot have gone the way of the dinosaur; the parallel port is dying out. So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? Tom ###### From: "Martin Schoeberl" Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga References: Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Lines: 39 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4920.2300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4920.2300 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 14:41:49 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.47.18.244 X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.chello.at X-Trace: news.chello.at 1039531309 213.47.18.244 (Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:41:49 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:41:49 MET Organization: Customers chello Austria Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.stueberl.de!news.netcologne.de!newsrouter.chello.at!news.chello.at.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:23864 Hi Tom, > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? In my case (as I do prototyping with FPGAs) I first design a PCB along with the pinout of the FPGA. It really helps in PCB routing when you can change the pinout of the FPGA. The first PCB get's produced at http://www.pcb-pool.com. They have reasonable pricing. Then I have to wait for a 'good day' to solder the parts. It is possible to hand solder 0.5 mm pitch even with an old 30 W solder iron (But I've also seen some destroyed PCBs/chips, so be careful). When everything is ok the complete PCB will be produced by someone else. They also buy the parts for you (and get better prices). But you have to be careful with your part list... The price is ok even for small quantitys like 20 pcs (second stage of prototyping), but the setup cost is about EUR 800. > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Ethernet with a simple (and cheap) CS8900. > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? I think it's a little bit off topic, since most use ready made FPGA prototyping boards (like the famous ones from BurchED). comp.arch.embedded is a group where you can find a lot of 'hardware hackers'. Martin -- JOP - a Java Optimized Processor for FPGAs. http://www.jopdesign.com ###### From: Kevin Brace Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:29:09 -0600 Organization: None Lines: 151 Sender: kevinbraceusenet@hotmail.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 1cust83.tnt91.chi5.da.uu.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: newsreader.mailgate.org 1039580631 20631 67.195.73.83 (11 Dec 2002 04:23:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@mailgate.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 04:23:51 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsreader.mailgate.org!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:23934 Thomas Womack wrote: > > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > into an ISA slot on a PC. Thomas, About 5 years ago, I purchased an ISA bus prototype breadboard so that I can make an AdLib compatible sound card. I never finished that project because I didn't know anything about how to deal with the analog portion of the circuit (And I still don't know anything about analog circuit to date . . .), but anyhow, I connected Yamaha's YM3812 FM sound chip to the board with some TTL chips like 74LS245 and 74LS688, and was able to do read and write access to the chip from my computer via I/O port 0388H and 0389H. Since then I have lost the board, and cannot find it . . . I hope to find it someday so that I can finish the project. > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? > > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? > > Tom If you wanted to connect something to the PCI bus, you will probably want to purchase a PCI prototype board, rather than making your own PCB. More than a year ago, I purchased a Spartan-II PCI development kit from a company called Insight Electronics to test a PCI IP core I developed in Verilog HDL. Because I was poor, I didn't have access to an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer, so I had to do almost all the testing on an HDL simulator (ModelSim XE-Starter from Xilinx which is free). When I first fired up the board, the configuration register block of the PCI IP core worked fine, and Windows 98 automatically detected the board, but as soon as I tried to access the I/O registers mapped by the BIOS, the computer froze. Because I didn't have an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer, I didn't know what was going on, and from there I had to waste two and a half weeks trying to figure out why the computer will crash as soon as I accessed the I/O registers, but not the configuration register block. The PCI IP core was working perfectly fine during an RTL simulation (Verilog HDL code simulation). Ultimately, I figured out the problem by simulating the logic generated by the HDL synthesis tool (Post P&R simulation), and found that several important control signals were going undefined, which probably meant that the HDL synthesis tool incorrectly synthesized the design. Turned off bunch of optimizing sounding options, and the HDL synthesis tool this time correctly synthesized the design (Redid the post P&R simulation to make sure the simulation results agreed with the RTL simulation's results. Other than the logic delay associated with the post P&R simulation, the results matched.). After that, I fired up the PCI card, and this time, the I/O register access will no longer froze the computer, and was able to read and write to the I/O registers correctly. Since then, Insight Electronics discontinued the card I purchased, but recently released a newer PCI prototype card. http://www.insight-electronics.com/cgi-bin/bvutf8/memec/scripts/local/mc_loc_b.jsp?Div=INSIGHT&Reg=AMERICAS&Country=UNITED_STATES&Lang=EN&EDOID=187428&Manu=XILINX The newer card now costs $250 (Older one cost $145), but is still the cheapest FPGA-based PCI prototype card available. However, the problem of using this card is that, they are only selling you the shell (hardware) only, and you need to separately obtain a PCI IP core to use the board. The board does come with a reference design, but is assumed by Insight Electronics that the user will be using Xilinx's LogiCORE PCI IP core which costs $2,000 for a single project license or $5,000 for a regular license. Currently, the only available option for poor hobbyists to use this type of PCI prototype board will be to use Opencores.org's free PCI IP core, but not too many people seem to be actively using it. If Opencores.org's free PCI IP core doesn't work for you, you will have to do develop your own PCI IP core, which is possible because I was able to do it, but it will take several months to understand PCI and develop the IP core. Because of the PCI IP core problem, you might want to consider purchasing a PCI prototype board with PLX Technology's PCI bridge and an FPGA attached to it. I know that PLX Technology sells prototype boards with their own chips, but I am not sure they have one with an FPGA attached to it. The big advantage of using PLX's chip will be that you don't have to deal with the aforementioned nasty PCI IP core issues. Since we are talking of poor hobbyists here, we need to watch how much money is being spent. Here is how much I spent for my PCI project. Insight Electronics Spartan-II 150 PCI development kit $145 Related option board 1 $ 95 Related option board 2 $ 40 Parallel port JTAG programming cable $ 60 Tax + shipping for the above 4 items $ 40 PCI Local Bus Rev. 2.2 Specification $ 60 PCI Hardware and Software 4th Edition $110 PCI System Architecture 4th Edition $ 40 Several Verilog HDL texts about $200 Xilinx ISE WebPACK free ModelSim XE-Starter (Downloaded from Xilinx) free Electricity cost for downloading the two software $2 (?) (Takes 15 hours with a 56K modem) --------------------------------------------------------------- Total $792 I have to admit, Xilinx giving out a complete FPGA development environment helped save me a lot of money, or otherwise I would have had to pay another $1,700 for software ($700 for ISE BASE-X and $1,000 for ModelSim XE). Looking back at my PCI project, things have definitely gotten tougher for hobbyists, considering that PCI bus is a lot more complicated than ISA bus which means it takes a lot more time to learn the bus protocol, and even hobbyists need to know HDL to realistically design anything with an FPGA. Furthermore, really poor hobbyist like myself who cannot afford an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer need to rely more on a simulator to make sure that the design will function correctly. However, writing testbenches is the most boring aspect of the design (Let's face it, everyone loves designing the circuits, but not testing it.), and I don't really enjoy doing it. Unfortunately, almost all the HDL books sold at bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble largely remain an HDL syntax reference manual, and lacks a real world project like "Let's develop a PCI IP core, and hook it up to your computer!" that might motivate more people to get into the wonderful world of hardware design or hobbyists electronics projects. Kevin Brace (If you want to respond to what I wrote, I prefer if you will do so within the newsgroup.) ###### Sender: Theo Markettos From: Theo Markettos Supersedes: Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga References: User-Agent: tin/1.5.10-20011117 ("Darkcell") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.22 (i686)) Originator: theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk ([193.201.200.170]) Date: 19 Dec 2002 21:46:18 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <6Wi*k+iGp@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> Lines: 90 Organization: [posted via Easynet UK] NNTP-Posting-Host: :Öê¨%L#.news.easynet.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=Jg?Y73aaPa<`hGGg>Y>bm?W_l<;^@7979Xi^5XSWb>l= Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!colt.net!easynet-quince!easynet.net!easynet-post1!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24257 Hi Tom, Thomas Womack wrote: > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > into an ISA slot on a PC. Sounds like what I do at work :-) Seriously, just because everything has gone surface mount isn't necessarily a good reason for you to do the same. We deal almost exclusively with through-hole components because the boards are easy to repair in the field (20000ukp machines in hospitals). Often you can get away with using through-hole if you want, with perhaps daughter boards with surface mount chips on them. The speed won't be wonderful, but if you're hacking sometimes you don't really care about speed. > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? It depends. I'm just getting my first board built at home - through a contact, so it isn't costing me anything - but I've heard http://www.olimex.com/pcb recommended. They're in Bulgaria, but a double sided 160x100mm board is $26 plus postage, which is very good (and $5 postage is probably cheaper for UK people than fabbing in the US). You _can_ get people to build boards for you, but you'll be stung by the tooling charge for small quantities. Also getting obscure components in small quantities is difficult - you have to pretend[1] to be a company before distributors will talk to you, but you can sometimes get samples (eg Maxim give them free from their website). [1] AFAIK completely legally. IANAL, but anyone can be a sole trader without any paperwork if you don't make a profit - this is what I do to stop silly web forms from telling me to go back and fill in the company field. Surface mount soldering is possible by hand. I've done it with a piece of wire wrapped around a free-with-cornflake-packet iron - not the best tools for the job, but possible. If you don't go down the PCB route, another method is to solder wires to each pad to convert the SMD to a through-hole layout - tedious but possible. For an example, see a board I built: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/superio/ If you're into getting components (since I know you're in the UK), Maplin are fairly useless these days unless you're near a shop, but it's often still easier to mail order. Rapid http://www.rapidelec.co.uk/ are very good and cheap (definitely worth getting a catalogue), whilst RS http://rswww.com/ and Farnell http://www.farnell.com/ are more expensive but have wider ranges. For credit cards, Farnell have a minimum order of 10ukp whilst Rapid charge 3ukp postage below 30ukp of order (haven't used RS recently from home, so can't comment). Rapid are better at selling things in small quantities (sometimes Farnell/RS only sell things in packs of 5 or 10). > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? There are USB microcontrollers out there; Cypress make some. There are also USB to serial chips - there's a thread on comp.arch.embedded on this very subject at the moment. > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? comp.arch.hobbyist is another group to look at. It's fairly low traffic, but mostly consists of people doing this sort of thing at home, as opposed to full time (so can't afford $$$ for tools etc - but there are tricks to get around this). It's bot-moderated (to stop floods of OT noise it was receiving), but if you post you'll get an email explaining it all. Hope this helps, Theo PS Tom, grab me (caliston) on #chiark if there's anything you want to ask with a slightly lower latency :-) -- Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk Liphook, Hampshire, UK theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk http://www.markettos.org.uk/ ###### From: "Theron Hicks (Terry)" Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 22:43:28 -0500 Organization: Michigan State University Lines: 124 Message-ID: <3E03E360.C01D2826@egr.msu.edu> References: <6Wi*k+iGp@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm835-23.dialip.mich.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AUTHid: hicksthe X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf To: pmxtow@merlot.uucp Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!msunews!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24299 Tom, I do assemble surface mount parts in what is only just above a hobbiest level shop. The trick is to use a very small iron. A magnifier to help with the vision may be useful but not absolutely necessary. A cheap jeweler's loupe will save many headaches in troubleshooting your assembly. Hand soldering resistors and capacitors down to 0603 size is not to bad. 0805 size parts are easy even for a 47 year old man who feels half blind. Surface mount semiconductors are much simpler to mount than you would ever believe. Even the fine pitch parts (0.5 mm pin pitch) are remarkably easy to solder. If you are dealing with standard SOIC parts (0.05" pitch) then they are really easy to do. The trick is to tie down one corner with a small amount of solder and then tie down the opposite corner at exactly the right spot. The other pins automatically line up. The only thing that I would say is that if you are paying for boards to be made, pay the extra for solder mask. It is worth 10 times what they charge in terms of less headaches. ( I wouldn't even try a 0.5 mm pitch part without solder mask.) The gull wing IC leads are much easier to deal with than the J-lead style. (Xilinx TQ144 is a gull wing, their PC84 package is J-lead). I personally would not even consider a Ball Grid Array type package although some say they are easy. One more comment... surface mount ICs are easy to install. They can be really difficult to remove without damaging the board beyond repair. Take your time if you need to remove a part. By the way, do you folks over there have Digikey available. While they are sometimes a little more expensive than some of the competition they do sell small quantities of surface mount parts. I suspect that Farnell will do so as well. Here in the USA, they are Newark and I know that Newark does so. In fact, Newark sometimes gets small quantities of Farnell parts for me when Newark's US warehouse is out of stock. Theron Hicks Theo Markettos wrote: > Hi Tom, > > Thomas Womack wrote: > > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > > into an ISA slot on a PC. > > Sounds like what I do at work :-) Seriously, just because everything has > gone surface mount isn't necessarily a good reason for you to do the same. > We deal almost exclusively with through-hole components because the boards > are easy to repair in the field (20000ukp machines in hospitals). Often you > can get away with using through-hole if you want, with perhaps daughter > boards with surface mount chips on them. The speed won't be wonderful, but > if you're hacking sometimes you don't really care about speed. > > > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? > > It depends. I'm just getting my first board built at home - through a > contact, so it isn't costing me anything - but I've heard > http://www.olimex.com/pcb recommended. They're in Bulgaria, but a double > sided 160x100mm board is $26 plus postage, which is very good (and $5 > postage is probably cheaper for UK people than fabbing in the US). > > You _can_ get people to build boards for you, but you'll be stung by the > tooling charge for small quantities. Also getting obscure components in small > quantities is difficult - you have to pretend[1] to be a company before > distributors will talk to you, but you can sometimes get samples (eg Maxim > give them free from their website). > > [1] AFAIK completely legally. IANAL, but anyone can be a sole trader > without any paperwork if you don't make a profit - this is what I do to stop > silly web forms from telling me to go back and fill in the company field. > > Surface mount soldering is possible by hand. I've done it with a piece of > wire wrapped around a free-with-cornflake-packet iron - not the best tools > for the job, but possible. If you don't go down the PCB route, another > method is to solder wires to each pad to convert the SMD to a through-hole > layout - tedious but possible. For an example, see a board I built: > http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/superio/ > > If you're into getting components (since I know you're in the UK), Maplin > are fairly useless these days unless you're near a shop, but it's often > still easier to mail order. Rapid http://www.rapidelec.co.uk/ are very good > and cheap (definitely worth getting a catalogue), whilst RS > http://rswww.com/ and Farnell http://www.farnell.com/ are more expensive but > have wider ranges. For credit cards, Farnell have a minimum order of 10ukp > whilst Rapid charge 3ukp postage below 30ukp of order (haven't used RS > recently from home, so can't comment). Rapid are better at selling things > in small quantities (sometimes Farnell/RS only sell things in packs of 5 or > 10). > > > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? > > There are USB microcontrollers out there; Cypress make some. There are also > USB to serial chips - there's a thread on comp.arch.embedded on this very > subject at the moment. > > > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? > > comp.arch.hobbyist is another group to look at. It's fairly low traffic, > but mostly consists of people doing this sort of thing at home, as opposed > to full time (so can't afford $$$ for tools etc - but there are tricks to > get around this). It's bot-moderated (to stop floods of OT noise it was > receiving), but if you post you'll get an email explaining it all. > > Hope this helps, > Theo > > PS Tom, grab me (caliston) on #chiark if there's anything you want to > ask with a slightly lower latency :-) > > -- > Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk > Liphook, Hampshire, UK theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk > http://www.markettos.org.uk/ ###### From: "Theron Hicks (Terry)" Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 22:44:16 -0500 Organization: Michigan State University Lines: 124 Message-ID: <3E03E390.A9A1A16A@egr.msu.edu> References: <6Wi*k+iGp@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm835-23.dialip.mich.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AUTHid: hicksthe X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!msunews!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24301 Tom, I do assemble surface mount parts in what is only just above a hobbiest level shop. The trick is to use a very small iron. A magnifier to help with the vision may be useful but not absolutely necessary. A cheap jeweler's loupe will save many headaches in troubleshooting your assembly. Hand soldering resistors and capacitors down to 0603 size is not to bad. 0805 size parts are easy even for a 47 year old man who feels half blind. Surface mount semiconductors are much simpler to mount than you would ever believe. Even the fine pitch parts (0.5 mm pin pitch) are remarkably easy to solder. If you are dealing with standard SOIC parts (0.05" pitch) then they are really easy to do. The trick is to tie down one corner with a small amount of solder and then tie down the opposite corner at exactly the right spot. The other pins automatically line up. The only thing that I would say is that if you are paying for boards to be made, pay the extra for solder mask. It is worth 10 times what they charge in terms of less headaches. ( I wouldn't even try a 0.5 mm pitch part without solder mask.) The gull wing IC leads are much easier to deal with than the J-lead style. (Xilinx TQ144 is a gull wing, their PC84 package is J-lead). I personally would not even consider a Ball Grid Array type package although some say they are easy. One more comment... surface mount ICs are easy to install. They can be really difficult to remove without damaging the board beyond repair. Take your time if you need to remove a part. By the way, do you folks over there have Digikey available. While they are sometimes a little more expensive than some of the competition they do sell small quantities of surface mount parts. I suspect that Farnell will do so as well. Here in the USA, they are Newark and I know that Newark does so. In fact, Newark sometimes gets small quantities of Farnell parts for me when Newark's US warehouse is out of stock. Theron Hicks Theo Markettos wrote: > Hi Tom, > > Thomas Womack wrote: > > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > > into an ISA slot on a PC. > > Sounds like what I do at work :-) Seriously, just because everything has > gone surface mount isn't necessarily a good reason for you to do the same. > We deal almost exclusively with through-hole components because the boards > are easy to repair in the field (20000ukp machines in hospitals). Often you > can get away with using through-hole if you want, with perhaps daughter > boards with surface mount chips on them. The speed won't be wonderful, but > if you're hacking sometimes you don't really care about speed. > > > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? > > It depends. I'm just getting my first board built at home - through a > contact, so it isn't costing me anything - but I've heard > http://www.olimex.com/pcb recommended. They're in Bulgaria, but a double > sided 160x100mm board is $26 plus postage, which is very good (and $5 > postage is probably cheaper for UK people than fabbing in the US). > > You _can_ get people to build boards for you, but you'll be stung by the > tooling charge for small quantities. Also getting obscure components in small > quantities is difficult - you have to pretend[1] to be a company before > distributors will talk to you, but you can sometimes get samples (eg Maxim > give them free from their website). > > [1] AFAIK completely legally. IANAL, but anyone can be a sole trader > without any paperwork if you don't make a profit - this is what I do to stop > silly web forms from telling me to go back and fill in the company field. > > Surface mount soldering is possible by hand. I've done it with a piece of > wire wrapped around a free-with-cornflake-packet iron - not the best tools > for the job, but possible. If you don't go down the PCB route, another > method is to solder wires to each pad to convert the SMD to a through-hole > layout - tedious but possible. For an example, see a board I built: > http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/superio/ > > If you're into getting components (since I know you're in the UK), Maplin > are fairly useless these days unless you're near a shop, but it's often > still easier to mail order. Rapid http://www.rapidelec.co.uk/ are very good > and cheap (definitely worth getting a catalogue), whilst RS > http://rswww.com/ and Farnell http://www.farnell.com/ are more expensive but > have wider ranges. For credit cards, Farnell have a minimum order of 10ukp > whilst Rapid charge 3ukp postage below 30ukp of order (haven't used RS > recently from home, so can't comment). Rapid are better at selling things > in small quantities (sometimes Farnell/RS only sell things in packs of 5 or > 10). > > > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? > > There are USB microcontrollers out there; Cypress make some. There are also > USB to serial chips - there's a thread on comp.arch.embedded on this very > subject at the moment. > > > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? > > comp.arch.hobbyist is another group to look at. It's fairly low traffic, > but mostly consists of people doing this sort of thing at home, as opposed > to full time (so can't afford $$$ for tools etc - but there are tricks to > get around this). It's bot-moderated (to stop floods of OT noise it was > receiving), but if you post you'll get an email explaining it all. > > Hope this helps, > Theo > > PS Tom, grab me (caliston) on #chiark if there's anything you want to > ask with a slightly lower latency :-) > > -- > Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk > Liphook, Hampshire, UK theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk > http://www.markettos.org.uk/ ###### From: russelmann@hotmail.com (Rudolf Usselmann) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: 21 Dec 2002 05:14:41 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 73 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.152.41.201 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1040476481 14366 127.0.0.1 (21 Dec 2002 13:14:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Dec 2002 13:14:41 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24322 pmxtow@merlot.uucp (Thomas Womack) wrote in message news:... > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > into an ISA slot on a PC. > > Nowadays, passive components are little flecks of ceramic with solder > pads at each end, small ICs come in tiny flat-packs with centipede > fringes of legs around, and the interesting ones come either in large > flat-packs with centipede fringes, or in BGA form. And I presume the > signal-integrity requirements are such that bread-board, and even the > two-layer PCB, are Right Out. The BBC Micro and the ISA slot have > gone the way of the dinosaur; the parallel port is dying out. > > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? > > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? > > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? > > Tom Tom, you must be very old - probably about my age, to remember those big resistors ! ;*) Seriously, there are many ways to do prototypes or hobby projects. Believe it or not but those "big" resistors you are used to are still available. The biggest problem these days as you point out are the high pitch IC packages (commonly known as PQFP for Plastic Quad Flat Pack) and of course BGA and evern worth FPBA (Fine pitch Ball Grid Arrays) ! BGAs and FPGAs are virtually impossible to do in two or even 4 layer PCBs. Depending on the number of balls you are forced to use quite a few extra layers. Our company, like many others out there, specialize in all kinds of prototypes and all sizes of productions runs. For hobbyists FBGA "prototypes" are prohibitively expensive (unless you cashed in your stock option at the right time ;*). All of our low budges clients make sure they don't use any of the BGAs at all. It is sometimes hard but possible. Many chips do come in a variety of packages so you can chose the best solution for your needs. As others already have suggested, another popular solution is to use FPGAs and widely available prototyping boards. There you don't need to hire anybody, you can do it your self ! If you are still lost, please feel free to email me privately and I'd be happy to help. We do just as many low budget small projects, as we do full custom ASICs and 20 layer PCBs ! Best regards, rudi ------------------------------------------------ www.asics.ws - Solutions for your ASIC needs - NEW ! 3 New Free IP Cores this months (so far :*) FREE IP Cores --> http://www.asics.ws/ <--- ----- ALL SPAM forwarded to: UCE@FTC.GOV ----- ###### Sender: Theo Markettos From: Theo Markettos Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga References: <6Wi*k+iGp@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> <3E03E360.C01D2826@egr.msu.edu> User-Agent: tin/1.5.10-20011117 ("Darkcell") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.22 (i686)) Originator: theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk ([193.201.200.170]) Date: 22 Dec 2002 13:07:56 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <0JE*l5wGp@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> Lines: 38 Organization: [posted via Easynet UK] NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.201.200.170 X-Trace: DXC=FUYJkPhRO`TXL2J:I^GHNTUF2EjQSMk;PJl0i8e2XJ0PGd@W2nGf1G\ Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.stueberl.de!newspeer1-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!easynet-monga!easynet.net!easynet-post2!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24355 "Theron Hicks (Terry)" wrote: > By the way, do you folks over there have Digikey available. While they > are sometimes a little more expensive than some of the competition they do > sell small quantities of surface mount parts. I suspect that Farnell will > do so as well. Here in the USA, they are Newark and I know that Newark > does so. In fact, Newark sometimes gets small quantities of Farnell parts > for me when Newark's US warehouse is out of stock. Farnell and RS do - but not as wide a range as Digikey or Newark. At least often Digikey/Newark bring up things on findchips.com after not being able to find them with Farnell/RS. If only there was a European version of findchips.com. Many of the distributors are still in 'ring them up, spend half an hour telling them about your projected sales and then maybe they'll quote you a price after you've opened an account' mode. Case in point: findchips.com shows the CS8900 at $7.69 from Newark, but Farnell don't stock it. I got some samples from Unique Memec, but these had to be sent from Cirrus in the US - whilst Sequoia would only sell me them for 10ukp each with an MOQ of 6. If only Newark shipped internationally (I don't count a minimum order of $250 as sensible international shipping). On the subject of surface mounting, I believe a number of people have had success with a toaster oven[1] - see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/E-Z_Bake/ and http://www.pcbexpress.com/stencils/ Theo [1] I don't think I've ever seen a toaster oven as depicted in the UK. This may be naivete in domestic appliances on my part, but I once had a Baby Belling which may do the same job (but no glass door). Possibly adaption of an old oven, old microwave with integral grill or other heating element retrofitted to an old microwave may do the trick. Reuse for food afterwards is not recommended unless you like lead poisoning... -- Theo Markettos theo@markettos.org.uk Liphook, Hampshire, UK theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk http://www.markettos.org.uk/ ###### From: marcvanriet@yahoo.com (Marc Van Riet) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: 22 Dec 2002 19:03:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 16 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 217.136.186.67 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1040612627 17842 127.0.0.1 (23 Dec 2002 03:03:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Dec 2002 03:03:47 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24365 pmxtow@merlot.uucp (Thomas Womack) wrote in message news:... > > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? > > Tom You might want to look into the FT8U245AM from FDTI (see http://www.beyondlogic.org/usb/ftdi.htm). It gives you fast data transfers over USB. Interface with the device is like a parallel FIFO. On the PC side, you can write to it like to a normal serial port. Regards, Marc ###### From: steen@tech-forge.com (Steen Larsen) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: 23 Dec 2002 15:17:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 62 Message-ID: <3e8d96d6.0212231517.57031556@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 134.134.248.17 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1040685475 12410 127.0.0.1 (23 Dec 2002 23:17:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Dec 2002 23:17:55 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24399 pmxtow@merlot.uucp (Thomas Womack) wrote in message news:... > This may be an incoherent request, but I'll go ahead. > > When I last played with electronics, resistors were little cylindrical > things with long wire legs, and ICs had at most forty pins, which came > out of the side at convenient 2.54mm spacing; you could design on > bread-board. If you wanted to connect to a computer, you used the > parallel port, or the four-channel analogue-digital converter on the > BBC Micro joystick port. If you were really advanced, you might try to > build a two-layer PCB with little metal fingers at the bottom to plug > into an ISA slot on a PC. This reminds me of a conversation with a recently minted manufacturing engineer who had to be explained what a thru-hole resistor was, and then described why anyone would want to make them... :-) > > Nowadays, passive components are little flecks of ceramic with solder > pads at each end, small ICs come in tiny flat-packs with centipede > fringes of legs around, and the interesting ones come either in large > flat-packs with centipede fringes, or in BGA form. And I presume the > signal-integrity requirements are such that bread-board, and even the > two-layer PCB, are Right Out. The BBC Micro and the ISA slot have > gone the way of the dinosaur; the parallel port is dying out. > > So, what do people do to prototype now? As I read it, you do a lot in > simulation and then, once you're happy with a design, you send a file > to a boutiquie to get a PCB made and the components fitted to it. How > much does it cost to get one two- or four-layer PCB made, how long > does it take, and do you have to provide the company with all the > components you want fitted, or will they have 1kohm surface-mount > resistors and 555 oscillators in stock? I think it is really how much involvment/control you want. There is free software to do a two layer mask such that you can spin your own cards, but generally, (unless you are doing more than 2+ designs) it is probably more cost effective to order the bare cards for your design (~$30US/per for 4"x5" 2 layer, in small quantities). I have gone with two companies and turnaround is about two weeks. You can pay someone to put it all together, but if you design it, it is probably easier to put the first few together yourself. Once you understand how important flux is (!) you can solder quad-flat packs pretty easily (see www.tech-forge.com) > > How do you interface widgets to a computer nowadays? Are there chips > which can convert USB or PCI to something easier to contemplate; is it > practical for a hobbyist to connect things to the PCI bus? Depends on your speed requirements. I think the parallel port is going to stay around for a long time. Although I have not used the FTDI USB parts that Marc mentioned, they look cool, and probably allow you an upgrade path to USB2.x. As Kevin mentioned, PCI IP is a lot more complicated than the good old ISA days. > > Which is the right group for me to be asking these questions in? Ping me if you want more precise details. -Steen ###### From: hmurray@suespammers.org (Hal Murray) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 08:14:48 -0000 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: xrn 9.02 Sender: murray@glypnod (Hal Murray) References: <3e8d96d6.0212231517.57031556@posting.google.com> X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 16 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!glypnod!hmurray Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:24436 [How to connect FPGA to system] > .... As Kevin mentioned, PCI IP is a lot more complicated than the >good old ISA days. When I asked something about PCI a week or two ago, several people suggested chips by PLX. They go PCI to xxx where xxx is a lot easier to interface to. Some versions probably have a few GPIO pins that could be used to load the config bits into the FPGA, thus avoiding the ROM. -- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ###### From: "Stan Lackey" Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 23:47:09 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <3e8d96d6.0212231517.57031556@posting.google.com> X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 16 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!proxad.net!freenix!news-feed.riddles.org.uk!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:26539 > > Nowadays, passive components are little flecks of ceramic with solder > > pads at each end, small ICs come in tiny flat-packs with centipede > > fringes of legs around, and the interesting ones come either in large > > flat-packs with centipede fringes, or in BGA form. And I presume the > > signal-integrity requirements are such that bread-board, and even the > > two-layer PCB, are Right Out. The BBC Micro and the ISA slot have > > gone the way of the dinosaur; the parallel port is dying out. Um, folks? Just because some components are available in these forms, doesn't force you to use them! Even if there are elitists in this group that threaten to call you names if you don't! Components are still available in the old forms, if you're doing a project like people used to, there's no crime in using components that are easier to handle !! -Stan ###### From: bobsrefusebin@hotmail.com (Bob Perlman) Newsgroups: comp.arch.fpga Subject: Re: State of the PCB world Date: 11 Mar 2003 11:07:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <3e8d96d6.0212231517.57031556@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.120.87.227 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1047409671 19805 127.0.0.1 (11 Mar 2003 19:07:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Mar 2003 19:07:51 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch comp.arch.fpga:26548 "Stan Lackey" wrote in message news:... > > > Nowadays, passive components are little flecks of ceramic with solder > > > pads at each end, small ICs come in tiny flat-packs with centipede > > > fringes of legs around, and the interesting ones come either in large > > > flat-packs with centipede fringes, or in BGA form. And I presume the > > > signal-integrity requirements are such that bread-board, and even the > > > two-layer PCB, are Right Out. The BBC Micro and the ISA slot have > > > gone the way of the dinosaur; the parallel port is dying out. > > Um, folks? Just because some components are available in these forms, > doesn't force you to use them! Even if there are elitists in this group > that threaten to call you names if you don't! Components are still > available in the old forms, if you're doing a project like people used to, > there's no crime in using components that are easier to handle !! -Stan Uh, well, no one will call you names if you use through-hole parts, but a few of us will point out that such components often have rather nasty parasitics, particularly inductance. So if you do a project with old package types, it may be a good idea to use older, slower logic families as well. There's nothing elitist about ground bounce and signal corruption; they're equal-opportunity system-wreckers. Have fun storming the castle, Bob Perlman Cambrian Design Works