On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 09:37:08PM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote:
> > BTW none of our current PCB vendors count
> > vias or holes anymore when quoting, only total area.
>
> That's a nice change from the past (not that it affects most
> commercial designs, I'm sure). How is gold priced these days?
> The last board I had made in bulk was the GG2 Bus+ board - huge
> by many standards - big enough for a 100-pin Zorro edge plus
> a full ISA bus (36 + 62 pins). At q. 100, I was getting them
> for about $15 blank, plus shipping, after setup charges (2 layer)
We dont do too much gold (only the occasional PCI card) dont thgain that cost
us much extra but its on a panel with many other cards so I'm not really sure
>
> I've always wanted to make a successor to the Qbus COMBOARD (since
> I have exactly one working one left, one blank PCB, and one assembled
> unit I pried off the trade show booth that was probably DOA in 1985).
> The trick would be cost - a 1 sq ft 6 layer board with lots of gold
> at the bottom - I'm sure I couldn't afford to make more than a proto
> run, just because it would be for personal use, not a commercial
> product (what I _wish_ I could find would be a couple original ones
> from the field on the 3rd party market, but we were never as prolific
> with our Qbus boards as, say, Simpact, so nobody trades our old stuff).
> I'd probably redesign it to replace the parallel port with a SCSI port.
> 2 x serial + SCSI is more interesting these days than 2 x serial +
> line printer.
>
> -ethan
The size is what gets you, Maybe a 2 layer father card with a small SMT 6 or 8
layer daughter card would be cheaper...
>
> --
> Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 13-Sep-2004 04:40 Z
> South Pole Station
> PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -53 F (-47.3 C) Windchill -85.7 F (-65.40 C)
> APO AP 96598 Wind 11.6 kts Grid 342 Barometer 671.7 mb (10941. ft)
>
> Ethan.Dicks_at_amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
>
Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics
Received on Mon Sep 13 2004 - 12:22:53 BST