On Mar 11, 2010, at 11:19 AM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
  Passives are not an issue.  The assembly house
supplies them as
 part of the assembly fee. 
   Ahh, an assembly house...another expense.  I build my own
boards...far cheaper.  But then I've not dealt with big enough
quantities for that to become a problem; the largest run I've done
was fifty units.
   Even if they didn't, I'd pay them for it - I
don't want to deal
 with parts that I have a hard time seeing much less handling.
 FPGAs, level shifters (or more appropriately 5v tolerant LVTTL
 transceivers), LVDO regulators, etc. cost $$s no matter who you buy
 from (and I order from a lot of different suppliers).  I also
 design using readily available (ie in production) parts (the only
 exception are the unibus transceivers and I go on the secondary
 market for those and typically can only buy in lots of what's
 available...ie if somebody has 350 parts for $7/ea, that's what I
 get...yes I have a lot of $'s tied up in various inventory). 
   Yes, I have that problem too. :-(  They sure do come in handy,
though.
   Speaking of those 5V-tolerant transceivers, what's your favorite
part these days?
             -Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL