15 Nov
2005
15 Nov
'05
12:12 p.m.
This winter I'd like to try and build the RE Robot
Brain board (80188) that appeared in Radio Electronics
contemporary with the 68k articles. I have on hand an
approximately 4' x 2.5' sheet of double clad circuit
material, and I could cut the size I needed from that.
But it got me to thinking (uh oh). Wouldn't it be fun
to build a REALLY big motherboard. You could put all
sorts of uP's on it, ala the Dimension 68000. You
could put the kitchen sink on it (literally). More
then likely you could build something so powerful, you
could throw out your Terragigahertz Pentium whatever
system, and heat your home at the same time. And
probably the surrounding neighbors home's too. You
might even cripple the power grid. It would be like
sort of a black hole for electrons. Has anyone built a
really big motherboard?
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16 Nov
16 Nov
2:30 a.m.
Chris M wrote:
This winter I'd like to try and build the RE Robot
Brain board (80188) that appeared in Radio Electronics
contemporary with the 68k articles. I have on hand an
approximately 4' x 2.5' sheet of double clad circuit
material, and I could cut the size I needed from that.
umm the fun robot brains are small -
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbolt/e-index.html#inhoud
7:39 p.m.
umm but they're not classic, or at least vintage as
would be the case with an 80188.
--- woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
umm the fun robot brains are small -
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3:46 a.m.
I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel workstation -
tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell L66 come fairly close.
I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire "engineers panel" on
one PCB.
I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a standard 19"
rack.
Andy
7:23 a.m.
Also, the circuit main boards for scanning electron
microscopes used to be boards over 2ft in width and length. I know
now, that many of those same boards are scaled down to much smaller
sizes to be rack mounted next to other scientific gear in labs.
My brother received one that was determined to be defective
beyond repair from his professor when he was at college for
microprocessor design and engineering at R.I.T. in Rochester, NY. He
unfortunately lost it in his move to Buffalo, NY after he lost
interest in microchips (I know, sacrilege) and took up Linguistics at
SUNY Binghamton, NY and now on to Buffalo University, NY. I think he
still has some various odds and ends, but nothing significant because
of storage (or lack thereof).
-John Boffemmyer IV
At 03:46 AM 11/16/2005, you wrote:
I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the
Whitechapel workstation -
tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell L66 come fairly close.
I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire "engineers panel" on
one PCB.
I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a standard 19"
rack.
Andy
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9:44 a.m.
>>>> "Andy" == Andy Holt
<andyh at andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
Andy> I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel
Andy> workstation - tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell
Andy> L66 come fairly close.
Andy> I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire
Andy> "engineers panel" on one PCB.
Andy> I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a
Andy> standard 19" rack.
I've seen boards substantially bigger than that, in high end telecom
gear (n * 10 Gb/s switches). Those were meant to sit vertically in a
card cage, perhaps 30 inches tall.
One board I saw was full of big IC, most of them with 1000 pins or
more (back in 2001). The "little ones" had "only" 600.
The backplane was a monster too, 32 layers I think.
The company is gone now.
paul
1:45 p.m.
Andy Holt wrote:
I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the
Whitechapel workstation
Seconded. The Acorn M4 board is around the same size - I should compare
them sometime and see which is the larger.
I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire
"engineers panel" on
one PCB.
It doesn't 'feel' right counting those somehow though. Maybe to qualify
it should be a self-contained board with CPU/mem/IO (mind you, the O/P
asked about *homebrew* boards I believe, not commercial :-)
Either way, that'd rule out such as my NCR Tower (main board is about 1m
x 30cm, so poss. bigger than the Whitechapel in surface area - but the
memory and IO are all on seperate cards via a backplane) which is
reasonably impressive (the main board is at least twice as thick as the
average PCB too)
I suspect that very few boards were made that are
wider than a standard 19"
rack.
Not sure, but above a certain size there are handling issues. I presume
it wouldn't take much to break tracks due to flexing on larger boards.
cheers
Jules
3:06 p.m.
Not sure, but above a certain size there are handling
issues. I presume
it wouldn't take much to break tracks due to flexing on larger boards.
On the very large boards that I've seen, there are usually stiffeners
(metal bars) either screwed or soldered to the board for support. This
results in a board that's far more rigid than an unsupported board half the
size.
Cheers,
Chuck
6823
days inactive
6825
days old
8 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
andyh＠andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk -
aw288＠osfn.org -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
cclist＠sydex.com -
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
john_boffemmyer_iv＠boff-net.dhs.org -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
pkoning＠equallogic.com