10 Mar
2010
10 Mar
'10
7:50 p.m.
Rob Jarratt wrote:
There was a thread recently on the comp.sys.dec
newsgroup which ended up
with the suggestion from David Riley that he would be prepared to build an
FPGA-based board with a QBUS interface on one side and an SD interface on
Is there really still interest in it ?
I put my design away few years ago, as I didn't see anybody interested
enough to buy one.
There is the seasonal talk of it for sure, but ...
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
Remarks ?
Cheers
10 Mar
10 Mar
7:54 p.m.
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010, e.stiebler wrote:
Rob Jarratt wrote:
What "old ones" show up on eBay?
Zane
There was a thread recently on the comp.sys.dec
newsgroup which ended up
with the suggestion from David Riley that he would be prepared to build an
FPGA-based board with a QBUS interface on one side and an SD interface on
Is there really still interest in it ?
I put my design away few years ago, as I didn't see anybody interested enough
to buy one.
There is the seasonal talk of it for sure, but ...
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
Remarks ?
8:07 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
The "usual" suspects like cmd, dilog, emulex ?
OK, in all honesty I didn't check for more than a year, but they showed
up before, that's why I canceled my design ...
OTOH, they old
ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
What "old ones" show up on eBay?
8:23 p.m.
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010, e.stiebler wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
The "usual" suspects like cmd, dilog, emulex ?
OK, in all honesty I didn't check for more than a year, but they showed up
before, that's why I canceled my design ...
Okay, old 3rd party disk controllers. The problem with these is that they
also require old hard drives. I'm also slightly surprised to hear mention
of CMD controllers that aren't expensive, but then I've not looked for such
things in years.
My PDP-11's are using 1" High 3.5" SCSI Hard Drives, it does wonders for
the
noise level, and helps with the power consumption, but I'm honestly a bit
worried about their long term viability. At least I have a much larger
supply of SCSI drives I can use than I do MFM Hard Drives (and yes, I have a
few of those, and a couple ESDI drives).
Of course the other thing I worry about is power supplies. In fact that's
what I've been loosing VMS boxes to. :-(
Zane
OTOH,
they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
What "old ones" show up on eBay?
8:42 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
My PDP-11's are using 1" High 3.5" SCSI Hard Drives, it does wonders for
the
noise level, and helps with the power consumption, but I'm honestly a bit
worried about their long term viability. At least I have a much larger
supply of SCSI drives I can use than I do MFM Hard Drives (and yes, I
have a few of those, and a couple ESDI drives).
OK, I can tell you what I went through.
First I used 2.5" IDE, but this made the board too big (was quad then)
Next revision had a 1.8" drive on them, and I could make it on a double
size board.
Never thought of using SCSI, thought it is not worth it.
Real IDE, never cared, simply because of the limited cable length.
SATA ? To expensive, at least for the next few years.
So, if I would touch it again, I would use SD-FLASH. Very easy to deal
with, easy to exchange, cheap as hell.
Cheers
9:21 p.m.
At 6:42 PM -0700 3/10/10, e.stiebler wrote:
So, if I would touch it again, I would use SD-FLASH.
Very easy to
deal with, easy to exchange, cheap as hell.
Honestly I think this is the only route to go if someone is
developing a new interface at this point. The only reason my systems
currently use SCSI is because I was in the right place at the right
time.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
9:26 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
At 6:42 PM -0700 3/10/10, e.stiebler wrote:
exactly. fast enough (you get the 3 mbytes/s) and cheap.
So, if I would touch it again, I would use
SD-FLASH. Very easy to deal
with, easy to exchange, cheap as hell.
Honestly I think this is the only route to go if someone is developing a
new interface at this point. The only reason my systems currently use
SCSI is because I was in the right place at the right time. 
11 Mar
11 Mar
1:59 p.m.
Of course the other thing I worry about is power
supplies. In fact that's
what I've been loosing VMS boxes to. :-(
Normally DEC PSUs are well behaved in that when they fail they don't do
any damage to the rest of the machine. Given that, and given that there
are unliklely to be any custom ICs in the PSU, what is the problem?
-tony
10:13 p.m.
At 6:59 PM +0000 3/11/10, Tony Duell wrote:
Face it Tony, we're not all wizards like you. :-( Though given the
necessary parts, I could fix the one in my VAXstation 4000/vlc
(fans). The PSU in the XP1000 and the way that machine is acting has
me more than a little concerned, I'm afraid it might have taken
something with it. I discovered the problem on Monday, and haven't
had time to take a serious look at it. Though as long as the CPU
board, and the SCSI boards in it are fine, I should be okay. My
other XP1000 is only a 500Mhz, so I'd prefer not to loose the 667Mhz
CPU.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Of course the
other thing I worry about is power supplies. In fact that's
what I've been loosing VMS boxes to. :-(
Normally DEC PSUs are well behaved in that when they fail they don't do
any damage to the rest of the machine. Given that, and given that there
are unliklely to be any custom ICs in the PSU, what is the problem?
12 Mar
12 Mar
3:17 p.m.
New subject: Solid State Disk replacement for RD53, 54, RK05, RL02/02t
At 6:59 PM +0000 3/11/10, Tony Duell wrote:
Face it Tony, we're not all wizards like you. :-( Though given the
I am not a wizard. In fact I doubt if I am even a hacker.
I've always take n the attitude, though (as I mentioned in another
thread) that id I need to do something (as here, fix a PSU) and I odn't
know how to do it, then I am going to teach myself how to do it.
Of course
the other thing I worry about is power supplies. In fact that's
what I've been loosing VMS boxes to. :-(
Normally DEC PSUs are well behaved in that when they fail they don't do
any damage to the rest of the machine. Given that, and given that there
are unliklely to be any custom ICs in the PSU, what is the problem? necessary parts, I could fix the one in my VAXstation
4000/vlc
(fans). The PSU in the XP1000 and the way that machine is acting has
Another difference between you and me. I _repair_ fans. No, I am not
kidding.
me more than a little concerned, I'm afraid it
might have taken
something with it. I discovered the problem on Monday, and haven't
had time to take a serious look at it. Though as long as the CPU
board, and the SCSI boards in it are fine, I should be okay. My
other XP1000 is only a 500Mhz, so I'd prefer not to loose the 667Mhz
CPU.
What's it doing? Could it be excessive ripple or noise on a power line?
-tony
10 Mar
10 Mar
9:52 p.m.
On Mar 10, 2010, at 7:50 PM, e.stiebler wrote:
Not that expensive? I call $100-200 for a Qbus card pretty
pricey. Unibus models go for many hundreds, upwards of $1000.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
There was a
thread recently on the comp.sys.dec newsgroup which
ended up
with the suggestion from David Riley that he would be prepared to
build an
FPGA-based board with a QBUS interface on one side and an SD
interface on
Is there really still interest in it ?
I put my design away few years ago, as I didn't see anybody
interested enough to buy one.
There is the seasonal talk of it for sure, but ...
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not
that expensive.
Remarks ?
9:56 p.m.
Dave McGuire wrote:
Sorry, but the new one want be cheaper than that. That's why I don't
call them expensive.
OTOH, they old
ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
Not that expensive? I call $100-200 for a Qbus card pretty pricey.
Unibus models go for many hundreds, upwards of $1000.
10:37 p.m.
On Mar 10, 2010, at 9:56 PM, e.stiebler wrote:
Sorry, but the new one want be cheaper than that. That's why I
don't call them expensive.
A new one can easily be cheaper than that, assuming you don't
intend to recoup all of your development expenses in the first two or
three sales. I expect quite a few of these cards would sell.
There's no reason to price it up in the stratosphere.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and
they are not
that expensive.
Not that expensive? I call $100-200 for a Qbus card pretty
pricey. Unibus models go for many hundreds, upwards of $1000.
10:52 p.m.
Dave McGuire wrote:
$ 200 is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
(4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
prototype amount 10, smt)
And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
Please tell me what you got so far.
Stratosphere ?
;-)
Sorry, but the
new one want be cheaper than that. That's why I don't
call them expensive.
A new one can easily be cheaper than that, assuming you don't intend
to recoup all of your development expenses in the first two or three
sales. I expect quite a few of these cards would sell. There's no
reason to price it up in the stratosphere.
11:02 p.m.
On Mar 10, 2010, at 10:52 PM, e.stiebler wrote:
$ 200 is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
(4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
prototype amount 10, smt)
And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
Please tell me what you got so far.
Stratosphere ?
;-)
If you want to design it to be as expensive as possible, sure, I
suppose you could do that.
First, four layers isn't required for something like this, as the
available board real estate is huge and the parts won't be that
dense. Next, I'd make them square, and trim them with a cutter to
eliminate the additional routing points.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Sorry, but the new one want be cheaper than that.
That's why I
don't call them expensive.
A new one can easily be cheaper than that,
assuming you don't
intend to recoup all of your development expenses in the first two
or three sales. I expect quite a few of these cards would sell.
There's no reason to price it up in the stratosphere. 
11:13 p.m.
On 3/10/2010 9:52 PM, e.stiebler wrote:
Dave McGuire wrote:
$ 200 is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
(4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
prototype amount 10, smt)
And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
Please tell me what you got so far.
Stratosphere ?
;-)
Do you really need gold fingers? My PCB place does gold immersion for a
flat $30.00 per board run. No, it's not as thick as gold fingers, but
does the board really need the full plating thickness?
If someone could give me a board size and a thickness, I can get a
ballpark PCB quote for you all. 10 versus 100 will not make a
difference to the board house, or at least has not yet made a difference.
Startup cost is $50 for layout.
SMT is not an issue either, unless you want the board house to
assemble. If so, it's $125 for a stencil.
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X)
brain at jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
Home: http://www.jbrain.com
Sorry,
but the new one want be cheaper than that. That's why I don't
call them expensive.
A new one can easily be cheaper than that, assuming you don't
intend to recoup all of your development expenses in the first two or
three sales. I expect quite a few of these cards would sell.
There's no reason to price it up in the stratosphere.
11:16 p.m.
On Mar 10, 2010, at 11:13 PM, Jim Brain wrote:
$ 200 is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
(4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
prototype amount 10, smt)
And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
Please tell me what you got so far.
Stratosphere ?
;-) Do you really need gold fingers? My PCB place does gold immersion
for a flat $30.00 per board run. No, it's not as thick as gold
fingers, but does the board really need the full plating thickness?
Nope. I forgot to mention that. I have several commercially-
produced Qbus and Unibus boards that lack gold plating on the fingers.
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Sorry, but the
new one want be cheaper than that. That's why I
don't call them expensive.
A new one can easily be cheaper than that, assuming you don't
intend to recoup all of your development expenses in the first
two or three sales. I expect quite a few of these cards would
sell. There's no reason to price it up in the stratosphere. SMT is not an issue either, unless you want the board
house to
assemble. If so, it's $125 for a stencil.
Indeed, SMT will be *cheaper* due to the reduced number of holes
to be drilled. And much faster to assemble.
-Dave
11 Mar
11 Mar
12:56 a.m.
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>> $ 200 is definitely even close to the
stratosphere.
>> Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
>> (4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
>> prototype amount 10, smt)
>> And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
>>
>> Please tell me what you got so far.
It's been a few years since I priced small runs of through-hole-heavy
Qbus boards, but our Qbus COMBOARD was 4 layer, had the usual amount
of gold fingers, and *bare* cost us $500 *each* in short runs. We put
our own handles on them. I still have the foot-powered rivet press
and (somewhere) bags of suitable rivets.
PCB manufacture is cheaper than it was when we started doing 4 and 6
layer boards, but that sort of price is why we stopped making certain
models of boards when the PCB stack ran out - too expensive to make a
short run and not enough customer demand for a large run.
?Indeed, SMT will be *cheaper* due to the reduced
number of holes to be
drilled. ?And much faster to assemble.
Recently, the 2-layer boards I've had made and priced had no surcharge
for hole quantity. I'm willing to concede that's not so for
multi-layer, but certainly SMT is convenient in many ways (more room
to route signals on the bottom for one).
I would personally not be fussy about SMT vs through-hole construction
- either would be fine if it kept the price down.
-ethan
2:02 a.m.
On Mar 10, 2010, at 9:56 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Dave McGuire
<mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
I've done budgetary pricing for my next set of boards and a quad sized board 4 layers
with gold edge connectors, solder mask and silkscreen (I'm no where near the hole
limit) was running ~$60-90/ea for a run of 25 boards. That also includes doing electrical
tests for the boards.
I've found that a quad board fills up pretty quickly when you start adding the various
regulators (it's sad that you need as many as 3 or 4 different voltages), unibus
transceivers, level shifters, etc, etc (I do everything in LVTTL since those parts are
more obtainable but typically not 5v tolerant). Going 4 layers makes routing *so* much
easier and you get better signal integrity.
I'd like to see someone put together a board for $200 (complete). For unibus, you can
need upwards of 10 transceiver chips and the last time I could find them they were $7/ea.
Just for the bare fab + transceivers you're well towards $150 and haven't done
anything yet. As far as SMT goes, I'm not up to soldering 208pin QFPs or 0603s so add
in assembly costs too. Typically, what I've been doing is that the transceivers are
the only thru-hole parts and *maybe* a connector (some connectors are better thru-hole
because of mechanicals).
In the end, assembled boards that do anything interesting is probably closer to $500 than
$200 depending upon what you want to do on the board (ie what you do once you get past all
the interface gunk). When I do boards, I don't do junk drawer stuff. It's all
new (not scavenged) parts. You'd be surprised how fast all the little stuff adds up.
TTFN - Guy
>> $ 200 is definitely even close to the
stratosphere.
>> Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
>> (4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
>> prototype amount 10, smt)
>> And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
>>
>> Please tell me what you got so far.
Indeed, SMT will be *cheaper* due to the reduced
number of holes to be
drilled. And much faster to assemble.
Recently, the 2-layer boards I've had made and priced had no surcharge
for hole quantity. I'm willing to concede that's not so for
multi-layer, but certainly SMT is convenient in many ways (more room
to route signals on the bottom for one).
I would personally not be fussy about SMT vs through-hole construction
- either would be fine if it kept the price down. 
4:31 a.m.
Guy Sotomayor wrote:
I've done budgetary pricing for my next set of
boards and a quad sized
board 4 layers with gold edge connectors, solder mask and silkscreen (I'm
no where near the hole limit) was running ~$60-90/ea for a run of 25
boards. That also includes doing electrical tests for the boards.
And this should easily fit on a dual height board.
I'd like to see someone put together a board for
$200 (complete). For
unibus, you can need upwards of 10 transceiver chips and the last time I
could find them they were $7/ea.
I'm looking into using TI's AM26S10C quad transceivers. They don't
have the OR-ed enable you get on a 8641, but that's nothing that can't
be remedied with a bit of logic upstream. They are about $1 a piece
and come in both DIP and SOIC packages. I ordered a few but haven't
played with them yet. If they do the job and will respond to 3.3V,
they could even be hooked straight up to a 5V-tolerant PLD.
Cheers,
--
Steve Maddison
http://www.cosam.org/
11:29 a.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 1:31 AM, Steve Maddison wrote:
I'm looking into using TI's AM26S10C quad transceivers. They don't
have the OR-ed enable you get on a 8641, but that's nothing that can't
be remedied with a bit of logic upstream. They are about $1 a piece
and come in both DIP and SOIC packages. I ordered a few but haven't
played with them yet. If they do the job and will respond to 3.3V,
they could even be hooked straight up to a 5V-tolerant PLD.
I've looked at those for a while, but haven't found anyone who actually stocks
them. A number of places have them in their catalogs but have a 28 week lead time. Where
did you find them?
Ideally the part that I want is similar to the 26s10 but it's non-bus side signals are
tri-state and LVTTL compliant. That would save me a fair number of parts.
TTFN - Guy
11:48 a.m.
Guy Sotomayor wrote:
I've looked at those for a while, but haven't
found anyone who actually
stocks them. A number of places have them in their catalogs but have a 28
week lead time. Where did you find them?
I got mine from Mouser just a week or two ago.
Ideally the part that I want is similar to the 26s10
but it's non-bus
side signals are tri-state and LVTTL compliant. That would save me a fair
number of parts.
Planning to drive and receive from a single pin, per chance? If
they'll take LVTTL on the driver input (which I'm hoping they will)
you could probably get away with one 5V-tolerant tri-state buffer on
the receiver output if the enables are used wisely. I was planning to
try such a set-up with a 74LVC244.
--
Steve Maddison
http://www.cosam.org/
12:49 p.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Steve Maddison wrote:
There have been a lot of discussions about driver chips for Qbus
and Unibus here over the years, usually ending in frustration. Has
anyone tried to just do it with discretes? Nice little general-
purpos SOT-23 transistors, both bipolar and MOSFETs, are available
cheaply. Just a few days ago I bought a partial reel of 2N7002s,
just short of three thousand parts, for thirty bucks, and 1200
2N3904s for $10. What would it take to do this with 2N7002s,
2N3904s, or 2N3906s?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Ideally the
part that I want is similar to the 26s10 but it's non-bus
side signals are tri-state and LVTTL compliant. That would save
me a fair
number of parts.
Planning to drive and receive from a single pin, per chance? If
they'll take LVTTL on the driver input (which I'm hoping they will)
you could probably get away with one 5V-tolerant tri-state buffer on
the receiver output if the enables are used wisely. I was planning to
try such a set-up with a 74LVC244.
12 Mar
12 Mar
12:48 a.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 8:48 AM, Steve Maddison wrote:
That would work as it's spec'd to drive 5v with 5v tolerant inputs using a 3.3v
supply. It (and some related parts) support power sequencing if you tie the enable
(through a pullup to 3.3v) it'll be disabled while the 3.3v (and possibly others) is
coming up.
TTFN - Guy
Guy Sotomayor wrote:
Yea, just checked this morning and they have only a few thru-hole parts and SOICs are on
28 week backorder (which means that no one has any and TI has to schedule fab time to make
more).
I've looked at those for a while, but
haven't found anyone who actually
stocks them. A number of places have them in their catalogs but have a 28
week lead time. Where did you find them?
I got mine from Mouser just a week or two ago. Ideally the part that I want is similar to the
26s10 but it's non-bus
side signals are tri-state and LVTTL compliant. That would save me a fair
number of parts.
Planning to drive and receive from a single pin, per chance? If
they'll take LVTTL on the driver input (which I'm hoping they will)
you could probably get away with one 5V-tolerant tri-state buffer on
the receiver output if the enables are used wisely. I was planning to
try such a set-up with a 74LVC244.
11 Mar
11 Mar
3:02 a.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:56 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
It's a LOT cheaper now than it was then, and the price drops
substantially when you order a big pile of boards. For my last run
of boards, qty. 1 pricing was about $35/ea, qty. 25 was about $12.50/
ea, and qty. 100 was less than six bucks.
And no (Guy!) I'm not talking about junk box parts, but I don't
just up and order everything from DigiKey either. I paid about ten
dollars for over 5000 0.1uF 0805 bypass caps a year ago by buying
partial reels. Smart shopping gets low-volume production run
quantities of parts very affordably, and they're pretty much always
available.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
>> $ 200
is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
>> Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
>> (4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
>> prototype amount 10, smt)
>> And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
>>
>> Please tell me what you got so far.
It's been a few years since I priced small runs of through-hole-heavy
Qbus boards, but our Qbus COMBOARD was 4 layer, had the usual amount
of gold fingers, and *bare* cost us $500 *each* in short runs. We put
our own handles on them. I still have the foot-powered rivet press
and (somewhere) bags of suitable rivets.
PCB manufacture is cheaper than it was when we started doing 4 and 6
layer boards, but that sort of price is why we stopped making certain
models of boards when the PCB stack ran out - too expensive to make a
short run and not enough customer demand for a large run.
11:19 a.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:02 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:56 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
It's a LOT cheaper now than it was then, and the price drops substantially when you
order a big pile of boards. For my last run of boards, qty. 1 pricing was about $35/ea,
qty. 25 was about $12.50/ea, and qty. 100 was less than six bucks.
And no (Guy!) I'm not talking about junk box parts, but I don't just up and
order everything from DigiKey either. I paid about ten dollars for over 5000 0.1uF 0805
bypass caps a year ago by buying partial reels. Smart shopping gets low-volume production
run quantities of parts very affordably, and they're pretty much always available.
Passives are not an issue. The assembly house supplies them as part of the assembly fee.
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 $$s no matter
who you buy from (and I order from a lot of different suppliers). I also design using
readily available (ie in production) parts (the only exception are the unibus transceivers
and I go on the secondary market for those and typically can only buy in lots of
what's available...ie if somebody has 350 parts for $7/ea, that's what I get...yes
I have a lot of $'s tied up in various inventory).
TTFN - Guy
>> $
200 is definitely even close to the stratosphere.
>> Entertain yourself and get a quote for just the PCB.
>> (4Layer, gold fingers, 14 routing points, non standard thickness,
>> prototype amount 10, smt)
>> And while you're at it, put the qbus drivers on it and a handle.
>>
>> Please tell me what you got so far.
It's been a few years since I priced small runs of through-hole-heavy
Qbus boards, but our Qbus COMBOARD was 4 layer, had the usual amount
of gold fingers, and *bare* cost us $500 *each* in short runs. We put
our own handles on them. I still have the foot-powered rivet press
and (somewhere) bags of suitable rivets.
PCB manufacture is cheaper than it was when we started doing 4 and 6
layer boards, but that sort of price is why we stopped making certain
models of boards when the PCB stack ran out - too expensive to make a
short run and not enough customer demand for a large run.
12:28 p.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 11:19 AM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
Passives are not an issue. The assembly house
supplies them as
part of the assembly fee.
Ahh, an assembly house...another expense. I build my own
boards...far cheaper. But then I've not dealt with big enough
quantities for that to become a problem; the largest run I've done
was fifty units.
Even if they didn't, I'd pay them for it - I
don't want to deal
with parts that I have a hard time seeing much less handling.
FPGAs, level shifters (or more appropriately 5v tolerant LVTTL
transceivers), LVDO regulators, etc. cost $$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
12 Mar
12 Mar
1:01 a.m.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
For "drivers":
SN74LVC244 (2x4), SN74LVC541 (1x8) and SN74LVC162244 (4x4) or for the truely insane
SN74LVCH322244 (8x4) but the last is BGA only.
For fully registered transceivers:
SN74LVCH16543 (2x8).
I sometimes use the registered transceivers on outputs from the FPGA to keep the
simultaneous output signal switching in spec (ie stagger the switching of the output
signals by a clock cycle and then once all of the outputs are stable, clock it into the
registered transceiver).
TTFN - Guy
On Mar 11, 2010, at 11:19 AM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
For me it's not a matter of expense, it's getting it done. I'm not good
enough any more to solder these parts with the fine pin pitch and forget about trying to
do BGAs outside of an assembly house (or with sophisticated BGA rework stations with
re-ballers).
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?
15 Mar
15 Mar
4 p.m.
I'd really prefer RP emulation. This would allow use of older OS versions.
I'd also really prefer to see a UNIBUS version.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of e.stiebler
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:50 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Solid State Disk replacement for RD53, 54, RK05, RL02/02
Rob Jarratt wrote:
There was a thread recently on the comp.sys.dec
newsgroup which ended up
with the suggestion from David Riley that he would be prepared to build an
FPGA-based board with a QBUS interface on one side and an SD interface on
Is there really still interest in it ?
I put my design away few years ago, as I didn't see anybody interested
enough to buy one.
There is the seasonal talk of it for sure, but ...
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
Remarks ?
Cheers
20 Mar
20 Mar
10:40 p.m.
On Mar 15, 2010, at 1:00 PM, Julian Wolfe wrote:
I'd really prefer RP emulation. This would allow
use of older OS versions.
I'd also really prefer to see a UNIBUS version.
I'm planning on doing one that'll handle all of the disk types found on Unibus
PDP11s (ie no MSCP). The design is sketched out. It's just finding the time...
TTFN - Guy
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of e.stiebler
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:50 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Solid State Disk replacement for RD53, 54, RK05, RL02/02
Rob Jarratt wrote:
There was a thread recently on the comp.sys.dec
newsgroup which ended up
with the suggestion from David Riley that he would be prepared to build an
FPGA-based board with a QBUS interface on one side and an SD interface on
Is there really still interest in it ?
I put my design away few years ago, as I didn't see anybody interested
enough to buy one.
There is the seasonal talk of it for sure, but ...
OTOH, they old ones show up on ebay frequently, and they are not that
expensive.
Remarks ?
Cheers
5243
days inactive
5253
days old
29 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
brain＠jbrain.com -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
ggs＠shiresoft.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
julian＠twinax.org -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
steve＠cosam.org