Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Wed Jul 5 19:08:57 2000

I've recently taken an interest (becauseof my aversion to work) in surface
mounting through-hole components. It's easy to route and etch circuit
boards, but it's a pain to drill the holes. Then, of course, you have to
solder on both sides to complete the circuit... Machined-pin sockets seem
to work better for this.

I recently saw a board from a company that's been around about 10 years that
makes .050 pitch hole matrix boards, among others. They also make 2mm
boards, by the way, but I can't find their poop-sheet.

Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: <CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever


> >Since soldering is so much more reliable, and just as fast once you get
> >used to using the soldering iron, I don't see the point of said
> >breadboards. But anyway...
>
> I've been using these breadboards for about 20 years now and I still
> like them for a lot of things. They certainly aren't good for all
> possibilities, but I regularly do digital logic into the 50 MHz
> range with them and have few problems.
>
> Modern CMOS logic families seem to be a lot more forgiving for poor
bypassing
> and high-impedance power sources than good old-fashioned "straight" TTL.
> In fact, just for fun, I've pulled out *all* the bypass capacitors around
> a 40 MHz HC TTL circuit and found that it operated identically to before
> the bypass capacitors were pulled. Compare this to old-fashioned
> straight 7400-series logic where if I don't put bypass capacitors
everywhere
> all the flip flops randomly choose a new state every time the clock
> ticks!
>
> On the subject of breadboarding with solder and wires: are there PC-boards
> designed specifically for "place-and-tack" surface-mount prototyping?
> I'm envisioning a power grid, a bunch of SOIC pads with small fanout,
> a place for some surface-mount discrete parts, and maybe some way of
putting
> a header connector on the board. That'd be really useful. Sort of like
> those through-hole prototyping PC boards that used to be popular.
>
> Tim.
>
>
Received on Wed Jul 05 2000 - 19:08:57 BST