Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard?

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g

a

layed

hand.

then,

In the late 1960s i remember ICS, Daisy and Mentor systems that would do board layout. Rather expensive though, about %50K for the base workstation (often 2901 based) as much more for the software, another chunk $70k for the photo plotter (Gerber compatible). All plus an expensive person or two to drive it. And about $1k/month HW and SW maintenance contracts to keep it running. They did 4-layer and 6-layer boards or IC layouts with different and more expensive software.

My dad was a EE and got all the trade rags there were lots of ads.

Reply to
josephkk
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And Chart-Pack. But the really good ones were made by Bishop Graphics. The Bishop people were real SOBs; their prices were outrageous and they'd show up and tell you that your decals wouldn't be shipped unless you ordered your blueprint supplies from them too.

Peple happily dumped them when CAD got affordable.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Reply to
John Larkin

Are you sure about your timeframe? Was the 2901 even around in the late

60's?

Wikipedia - "Am2900 is a family of integrated circuits (ICs) created in

1975 by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)."

I think CAD for anyone but the really large companies didn't happen until nearly 1980 give or take a couple of years. We had a couple of

68000 based workstations in 1985 and I remember they made a 2901 software compatible version which ran twice as fast, which still wasn't much. I started some sort of run and I recall it had to run overnight. Then some idiot came in and pressed a key which kills your process. What a stupid key to have on a keyboard.
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Rick
Reply to
rickman

I bought several sizes of diamond core drill bits that sand away copper so that it leaves an isolated circular island of copper. On my (properly adjusted) drill press, I can make lots of little islands of various sizes on blank FR4 and use them for connection points. I use JL's method of the Dremmel to make a VCC strip at a convenient edge and solder bypass caps across the gap.

I've not found any problems with this method, but I'm not the SHF guru you guys are.

Reply to
John S

There used to be stick-on "pcb tracks" that were used for RF work. They looked like 1.6mm single sided PCB say 0.25" wide and 6" long with a single track just wide enough to form a 50ohm transmission line when the PCB was stuck onto a ground plane.

Chopping them into squares obviously gives an ad-hoc isolated "pad" that can be stuck wherever convenient.

Do these still exist, and what's the name?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Here is what mine look like:

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Reply to
John S

I've still got a drawer full of Bishop Graphics and Chart-Pack stuff, with DIPs in 2x and 4x sizes. (I'm saving 'em for "collector's items". Now all I have to do is find the right collector...)

In the Good Old Days, you'd make a scaled-up layout on mylar, then take it to a professional photography place with a "process camera": a huge bellows-type camera mounted on rails, with a lens about 6 inches in diameter. Then for a mere $50-100 they'd do a reduction to 1x that you could use to expose your silk screens for production. High tech!

Best regards,

Bob Masta DAQARTA v7.60 Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

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Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter Frequency Counter, Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI FREE Signal Generator, DaqMusiq generator Science with your sound card!

Reply to
Bob Masta

Well, 'guru' is a bit strong to describe my microwave skills, at least. ;) I mostly use microwave transistors at much lower frequency, because some of them have remarkable properties, like effectively infinite Early voltage or 300-pV 1-Hz noise. Response out to 20 GHz is a bug rather than a feature in that sort of use, sort of like an audio amp with response out to a megahertz.

It's all about finding the right ferrite bead to knock their bandwidth down to something vaguely reasonable. Murata BLM18BA and BB are good.

Occasionally I've made DIY stripboards for SC70ish parts, using several Dremel cutoff discs mounted on one arbor, with nylon washers in between. Gets old pretty fast.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Every city had a few shops with cameras like that, but they mostly did work for print shops, for newspapers and print flyers and such. They couldn't do PCB artwork photography because they couldn't hold the tolerances and didn't know the process tricks, like making ground planes from padmasters. Here in the SF area, Lorry Ray was the best. When I worked in New Orleans nobody was any good so we had to make our own camera, which was literally two rooms with a lens in the wall between them, big tracks for the art and the film.

The Big Easy: good food, good times, bad tolerances.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Reply to
John Larkin

I use carbide dental burrs in a Dremel, freehand, to cut away copper.

You can also put down Kapton tape and then copper tape patterns. Kinda low impedance.

I occasionally use the old metal shear to make a collection of narrow FR strips, as power busses and junction islands. They can be crazy-glued onto the copperclad ground plane.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

These used to be (?still are?) available commercially, but with the track geometry chosen so they were 50 ohms transmission line when above a suitable ground plane.Very simple and convenient when making simple GHz notch filters to remove harmonics.

Anyone remember the name?

(Curiously I made a trivial dead-bug circuit like this yesterday. Synchrotonicity rules).

Reply to
Tom Gardner
[...]

Wainwright, probably. No longer around.

Jeroen Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

For simple stuff, there's little to beat "dead bug" style.

There's any number of variants like hybrids between dead bug and the Manhattan and/or ugly styles favoured by some hams.

Whenever the design involves bolt on power devices, these provide some of the soldering points for everything else. Typically I'd use existing holes in a salvaged pressed sheet heatsink, punched out PCB blanks can be glued on for more solder points. Sometimes I've even been known to use tagboard for really basic stuff, small sub-assemblies on stripboard can be glued edgeways to the ali plate or secured with mounting bolts/spacers.

Basically - I just use whatever's ready to hand.

Reply to
Ian Field

Ah yes, that's it; thanks.

Googling for wainwright brings up other names that rings a bell: "minimounts" and "soldermount", plus a few pictures confirming it.

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notes "use copper foil tape from any stained glass supply house to form conductors like you would on a PC board. The tape is dirt cheap, has an adhesive backing, and is designed to take heat. You can cut the foil with scissors or an X-Acto knife,"

so that could probably be used on the plain side of single-sided PCB

Reply to
Tom Gardner

And here's a ten piece set

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Thank you. Carving islands is a great idea! Because some say that the heat from a solder gun can cause bonded islands to break loose.

Here's my breadboarding options so far, from best to worst.

Spin a board

Wire wrap or perf board

dead bug or Manhattan

nylon breadboard or strip board

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Don Kuenz
Reply to
Don Kuenz

Even better. At that price, I might get a more complete set. Thanks for the lead.

Reply to
John S

Check; i think the company name began with a "C"; they had a variety of tapes: black, transparent red, transparent blue; and many DIP patterns (round pad and oval pad).

Reply to
Robert Baer

At the abusive prices it is no wonder that movie theaters are going out of biz.

Reply to
Robert Baer

I think someone said Bishop which seems to ring a bell. That was what,

40 years ago? It could be anything and I likely wouldn't remember. I do remember they seemed rather pricey... but then I'm a famous tightwad. That's why I'm still looking for that $400 USB mixed signal 250 MHz oscilloscope. lol
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Rick
Reply to
rickman

I've been plenty wrong about trends before, but I don't think movie theaters will go under like video stores. Much of the movie theater experience is not duplicated by home theaters no matter how good they are. For the younger crowd, who is the bulk of the patrons, a lot of it is just getting out and about.

But then I didn't think many would be willing to pay $40+ a month for a cell phone when a house phone could be half that price... lol

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

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