> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:59:11 -0800
> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
> On 30 Nov 2010 at 18:56, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:
>
>> - I can design a PCB at home using free tools (Kicad rulez!) - I
>> can make boards good enough for fine pitch SMD at home (see my page,
>> http://tabalabs.com.br/eletronica/tts/index.htm) and the equipment is
>> all made from junk.
>
> Some very nice work, Alexandre!
Yes, it is.
How did you drill the holes?
The issue that always stops me from taking up toner transfer PCB
fabrication is drilling the vias. I calculate that my typical 8" X 10"
panel of boards is going to have about 1000 vias on it more or less.
Even if I stack several boards, peg them together and drill them all at
once, that's an awful lot of fine pitch holes to drill by hand.
By the time I contemplate, design, and build some kind of automated hole
drilling machine, I'm back to thinking that paying for fabrication is
cheaper. Getting mil resolution on a mobile drill head is not a simple
task, or so it appears to me.
Then if I solved the drilling issue, or just buckled down and did it by
hand, plating the through-holes either involves an intricate and slightly
dangerous (and more importantly, takes up lots of space) copper
electroplating capability or soldering a wire in every via, which is back
to vast tedium. Grommets are too large for the vias I usually want and
also are so expensive it's generally cheaper just to pay for fabrication.
Anyway, solving the drilling and plating issue is what stops me from home
PCB fabrication.
Jeff Walther
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:31:43 -0800
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: SCSI to IDE
On 1 Dec 2010 at 14:13, William Donzelli wrote:
> Life is not Minecraft - sometimes it is easier/faster/better just to
> buy the tools we need. Used, good condition Taigs are really not all
> that much money.
Oh, agreed, when it's practical. But if it's arm-and-a-leg as in the
case of Alexandre, I recommend seeking alternatives. It may be
*much* cheaper to build with the results being "good enough".
--Chuck
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Alexandre's right.
My girlfriend is from Brazil, and as it happens her son wanted a small CNC
mill; he decided on a nice little kit from California, but even for a
relatively small package like that the shipping and duty would have tripled
the price, so we had it shipped up here to Toronto and she took it down in
her luggage on her next trip down, along with a Sony laptop for her daughter
also for less than half price. Around $3000 saved just on those two items.
I don't know if the high duties encourage local industry, but it sure looks
like they foster imagination and creativity in making do with what's
available locally; hard for us to imagine up here where stuff is so cheap.
m
More closet cleaning :) See pics. Prices *include* postage in the
USA lower 48 states. Paypal to this email. Will ship
internationally at additional actual cost.
Microsoft Multiplan for Apple II. Two floppies, manual in binder
and clear box. $10
"Beneath Apple DOS", $6
"Apple Pascal - A Self-Study Guide", $6
"Borland Turbo Pascal 4.0, IBM PC version", (650+ pages), $8
http://s1181.photobucket.com/albums/x426/DrCharlesMorris/?action=view&curre…
thanks
Charles
>> The title smacks of hyperbole, but still an interesting read from a Macintosh ComputerLand salesman back in the day.
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/30/charles_eicher_computerland_mac_mem…
>The author sounds cocky and bitter.
That's a very popular tone of those who read and write The Register :-).
Remember, they were among the first to identify Itanium as the "Itanic", and
have along lineage going all the way back to Charlie Matco. If you earned
a Charlie Matco coffee mug, then by definition you knew how things really went down.
My favorite Register contributor by far in the past couple years (way post
Charlie Matco), is Ted Dziuba.
E.g. "Google releases serialization scheme: Pedantic programmers hold love-in".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/14/dziuba_google_protocol_buffer/page2…
choice quotes include:
* Unfortunately, because of heavy inbreeding within Silicon Valley
* engineering teams, the two products, although functionally
* similar, are not compatible with one another.
* If you want to do it, writing your own RPC layer isn't a herculean
* task. I managed to hack something together on top of Tomcat
* in a couple of hours. It didn't make me feel as manly as I
* hoped it would, so to supplement, I suggest you have two
* cigars, a glass of Maker's Mark, no ice, and a copy
* of The Godfather trilogy within reach.
* The Web 2.0 startup circle, being mostly composed of pretentious
* little shits, is likely to adopt protocol buffers as a first-class
* data interchange format.
And my favorite of all time:
* Think of how scalable that shit's gonna be. You'll put a real hurt
* on all that imaginary load your system is taking. Then, you get
* to go home and fuck the prom queen.
Tim.
At 07:50 PM 11/30/2010, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>In 7.3, I'm sure that's now true. I'm pretty sure I remember some
>COBOL and BASIC back in the 4.x and 5.x days, but I can't promise that
>my memory is 100% correct.
I think that's highly unlikely, particularly with COBOL since emulated
code wasn't something DEC wanted in the distribution. (and COBOL in the
4.x days used a number of instructions that weren't implemented in
MicroVaxen.) DEC didn't want clearly poorly performing software to be
in the kit.
That's the argument that allowed TECO32 to become part of the VMS
distribution.
-Rick
