[TML] Traveller Software: common file formats?

[Tom B]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Timothy Little <tim at little-possums.net>
wrote:

>
> You mean lower here, don't you?  You can design a (by previous
> standards) hellishly complex system in software, and do much of the
> *testing* in software too.  If your performance needs are not too
> extreme you can very easily do hardware prototypes with cheap
> re-usable FPGAs.


Yes, but if you need something that you have to build in hardware, it got a
lot harder. You can do more in software, but if you want to interface with
the outside world, sometimes you still need hardware that is custom. Or if
you are doing certain types of app that are still painful to do in SW.

My point was actually manufacturing a board in your basement or garage is
now a bit more challenging.


>
>
> Surface-mount components are mostly *easier* to use manually than
> through-hole ones, once you take drilling PCBs into account.  They're
> usually quite a lot cheaper, too.


?

When I wirewrapped an 80C196 microprocessor plus a series of other related
chips including a tachometer and a whole pile of sensor transducers and the
ROM to drive the thing, there was no drilling. I bought a nice board
predrilled with a whole grid of holes, procured the appropriate sockets to
allow wirewrap connections to the chips, and went to work with the wrap
tool. No drilling involved.

Now, from what I understood of wave soldering, I thought it required some
serious gear since it used a standing wave of solder which is not something
one has just sitting in a fountain on the desk....


> > Or else you have to do the design and send it to someone who can fab
> > it using the surface mount technology.
>
>
> A home hobbyist can do that.  The only time you need to send a design
> off is if you need an ASIC or you're ready for production in volumes
> greater than you can manage manually.


If you say so. I wire wrapped projects back in the early 90s and I've been
doing everything in software since 1994 so I'm a bit dated. I didn't think
you could get proper wave soldering gear at home. And every time I see a
blasted surface mount resistor or capacitor, its so small I'd need to work
with a super small set of tweezers and a huge magnifier to install it. That
wasn't a problem with standard ICs back in the day.

TomB