where can I get a circuit board for a project appearing in Radio Electronics magazine?

Most of their projects had a layout to make your own boards. Unless you have a Delorean and a good supply of Flux Capacitors, that is the only way that you could buy one.

The few articles that listed a suppler wanted to sell a kit of parts with the board. Most of those kits were sold for a year or two before they were NLA.

It would cost me more to make a board right now, since I don't have any boards or the chemicals needed, than it's worth. Just wondered if anyone existed out there with perhaps extra boards. If not, who out there could take a jpeg (digital cut out from the article) and make it into a board at reasonable cost?

You might find a local hobbyist who could do that, but PC Board houses want digital files and have minimum runs plus setup costs. Is there a local 'Maker' group?

Building a kit is kinda mindless. Make your own. It's not hard.

You can get parts from Mouser or Digikey.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

ts

have a Delorean and a good supply of Flux Capacitors, that is the only way that you could buy one.

th the board. Most of those kits were sold for a year or two before they we re NLA.

You may be in luck... if you can find a Gerber file of the board. An image in a magazine isn't good enough. There is an guy who makes board for a fa irly low cost per square inch. You do have to buy three of them, but still pretty much better than anyone else around.

2 Layer Prototype 3 PCBs $5 per square inch Ships in under 12 days

Oh yeah, you'll need drill file if you want plated through holes. If you ar e happy drilling your own, no issue.

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  Rick C. 

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ects

ou have a Delorean and a good supply of Flux Capacitors, that is the only w ay that you could buy one.

with the board. Most of those kits were sold for a year or two before they were NLA.

ge in a magazine isn't good enough. There is an guy who makes board for a fairly low cost per square inch. You do have to buy three of them, but sti ll pretty much better than anyone else around.

are happy drilling your own, no issue.

It was a hobby magazine that ceased publication in 2003. The articles were intended to use hand bade boards, like I did in the late '60s. A blank piec e of un-etched single sided board and a resist pen did the layout. I doubt tat any of those boards ever had Gerbers.

Maybe Don Lancaster could shed some light on this, since he wrote articles for Hobby Electronics magazines back then.

BillyBob wrote in news:qntmcj$ko$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Depends on the age of the article and most have source information included in the article.

So, the FEB 1982 article on making an inband gated sync descrambler for analog cable feeds will not likely be easy to find.

But a newer article might be able to be found.

Here's an idea. If Gerber files are not at hand, you can do your own layou t. FreePCB allows you to start with nothing, adding your own components an d connecting them with your own nets. It's easy and fun. Than you'll have something to send to OSH Park.

This will produce a very good looking board for not a lot of effort and onl y a few dollars, about as much as a six pack or a movie ticket most likely.

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BillyBob wrote in news:qntr73$me6$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

There are PCB board houses out there that will make you a proto run of as few as ten boards and it is cheap too.

All you need to do is lay it out again.

Hell, switch over to all surface mount devices and you can make it better than it ever was.

cts

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Not when you use through hole parts which is most likely what will be used on this project.

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  Rick C. 

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Anyone can make 2-sided PCBs at home, not too expensive. Only problem is PTH.

There's an easier way than the suggestions so far. Use matrix board, add the tracks yourself by soldering on wires. Downside is most such board is thin and paper based. Using insulated flex rather than solid core mitigates the issues that causes somewhat.

NT

The classic way to do it as a hobbyist back in the 70's was to trace the board layout by hand and use a centre pop to transfer all the holes onto the copper side. Then join the lands up with a suitable thick permanent marker pen. They sold proper resist pens but trial and error most dense ones worked OK if they didn't leave thin streaks.

The old copper etch chemistries were simple and still available for hobbyists being warmed strong ferric chloride solution (reuasble) or the more dodgy but cleaner cold HCl/H2O2 mix (which you must never store).

Beginners tend to break the fine drills putting the holes in.

Almost any makerspace or hackspace ought to have the ability to make PCBs in some form or other. These days probably by printing a mask onto an acetate sheet and using a pretreated photoresist board.

Some popular designs still have PCBs available from who ever the magazine contracted them out to. I was able to buy a theremin board from a UK maker decades after the magazine had ceased to exist. Amazing what a google search with the right keywords can turn up.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Why not? Surely any public library that took the magazine would have it in storage somewhere. Failing that a copyright library.

I can't see that building one now would do you much good.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

I'm still using that old technique, but it's getting harder to find dry ferric chloride in pellets these days, in Yurp anyway. The vast majority of suppliers insist on supplying it as ready-made solution which is no good to me. Or else what you see advertised as FC is in fact sodium persulphate, which takes at least 3 times as long to do the job.

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Martin Brown wrote in news:qnun5k$59t$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

Not the magazine, silly. The circuit board, which was originally something one could order from the designer.

I am sure the mag is available in many, many libraries around the nation. I never said the mag would be hard to find. The discussion is about PCBs. I simply gave an example of an old article.

It was simply an example, dufus. I doubt that even a third world country has any analog cable systems.

You can also use:

Just download their free ed itor, which is very easy to use, and then just draw / copy the circuit by h and. You don't need a Gerber file (or even a schematic). The downside is you are locked into buying from ExpressPCB, at least for the first order, b ut they are relatively inexpensive. After your first order, they will send you a Gerber file for free, which will allow you to buy elsewhere (such as JLCPCB), but if you're only going to make a few boards... why bother?

There are several other companies that provide simple proprietary editors l ike this. They are all priced about the same.

Thanks much, guys. Upon carefully reading the original article, the author mentions either purchasing the circuit board or using perf board. I think I'm going to do the latter (perf board) as I still have leftover pieces unused from many, many years ago.

FR4 universal prototype board, shown in use here:

available here:

is an excellent substitute for the through hole PCBs shown in old hobby magazines. All things considered, universal board offers the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to build small to medium sized, one of a kind, through hole, light power, simple circuit boards. In other words, the type of circuit typically found in a hobby magazine. There's SMD carrier boards that mate with universal to accommodate newer component packages. It's also pretty easy to solder larger SMD resistors and capacitors to universal.

Thank you, 73,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU 
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; 
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.