Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard?

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:52:42 -0400, krw@attt.bizz wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:00:04 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/17/2014 2:25 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg

It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips.

Brady?

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.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[josephkk]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 06:25:08 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
<presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg

It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

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.

(Around here, a lot of the people that you interview have worked for
Dolby. Turnover seems pretty high. They are like ILM, expecting people
to work for glory.)

Has Dolby done anything new or interesting in the past decade?

 

[John S]

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/09/14 12:47, John S wrote:

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

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?

 

[John S]

On 9/18/2014 6:47 AM, John S wrote:

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

Here is what mine look like:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/diamond%20core%20drill%20bit

 

[Bob Masta]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:49:01 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:52:42 -0400, krw@attt.bizz wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:00:04 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/17/2014 2:25 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg

It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips.

Brady?

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.

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

 

[Don Kuenz]

In sci.electronics.design John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote:

On 9/18/2014 6:47 AM, John S wrote:
On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

Here is what mine look like:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/diamond%20core%20drill%20bit

And here's a ten piece set http://tinyurl.com/n7xpljr

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

--
Don Kuenz

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 09/18/2014 07:47 AM, John S wrote:

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

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



--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 12:40:52 GMT, N0Spam@daqarta.com (Bob Masta)
wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:49:01 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 19:52:42 -0400, krw@attt.bizz wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:00:04 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/17/2014 2:25 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg

It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips.

Brady?

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.

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

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.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 06:47:34 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org>
wrote:

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

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.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z316_Proto.JPG



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/09/14 15:15, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 06:47:34 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org
wrote:

On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.


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.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z316_Proto.JPG

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).

 

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:00:04 AM UTC-7, rickman wrote:

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips. They made them with
scale factors so you could more easily see what you were doing, 2x and
4x that I recall.

Bishop Graphics was the big outfit.

I can dimly recall doing some layouts of small items on MacPaint (it had
pixel-level draw, and copy/paste, so it was a lot like decal/tape composition).
There had to be an accurate copy camera or at least Xerox, to get the
artwork at 1:1

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2014-09-18 16:28, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 18/09/14 15:15, John Larkin wrote:
[...]
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.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z316_Proto.JPG

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?

Wainwright, probably. No longer around.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Ian Field]

"Don Kuenz" <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote in message
news:lv7d5m$hna$1@dont-email.me...

Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

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.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/09/14 15:49, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2014-09-18 16:28, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 18/09/14 15:15, John Larkin wrote:
[...]
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.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z316_Proto.JPG

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?

Wainwright, probably. No longer around.

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.

http://www.wd5gnr.com/foil.htm
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

 

[John S]

On 9/18/2014 12:22 PM, Don Kuenz wrote:

In sci.electronics.design John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org> wrote:
On 9/18/2014 6:47 AM, John S wrote:
On 9/17/2014 1:48 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 09/17/2014 12:02 PM, John S wrote:
On 9/16/2014 11:17 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Don Kuenz wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

TIA.

--
Don Kuenz
Haven't we been thru this garbage before recently?


Yeah. But, is anyone interested in the way I do it? It's slightly
different from the rest of the posts.

I don't know. Are you good at it? All wisdom welcome!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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.

Here is what mine look like:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/diamond%20core%20drill%20bit

And here's a ten piece set http://tinyurl.com/n7xpljr

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

--
Don Kuenz

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

 

[Robert Baer]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 06:25:08 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin<jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz<garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg

It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

I used to lay out my own boards, decals and black crepe tape on
pin-aligned mylar. There would be a padmaster (pads only) and a
separate sheet for each trace layer. We sent it out to Lorry Ray in
Mountain View to be photographed. They could also do cool ground plane
tricks, all with wet photography. We'd send the film out to the fab
house and expect to get it back.

I still have a few layouts around, to show the kids. It was labor
intensive.


(Around here, a lot of the people that you interview have worked for
Dolby. Turnover seems pretty high. They are like ILM, expecting people
to work for glory.)

Has Dolby done anything new or interesting in the past decade?

Big sound systems for movie theatres (a dying biz) and a new home 3D
sound system.

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

 

[Robert Baer]

rickman wrote:

On 9/17/2014 2:25 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com
wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg


It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by
hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back
then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips. They made them with
scale factors so you could more easily see what you were doing, 2x and
4x that I recall. You set your design rules by picking the tape width
and the pad diameter. If you were a little tight and wanted to shave a
little off a pad... you shaved a little off a pad. lol

I didn't do layout then, but I've seen the artwork. Xacto knives are
your friends even if it is just for picking up the tracks and pads and
placing them.

I don't think CAD systems were used much even for layout until around
the time the PC hit the scene. I guess the big companies had them...
with "huge" 20" CRTs and light pens most likely. Don't know for sure.

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).

 

[rickman]

On 9/18/2014 11:23 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 06:25:08 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

Has Dolby done anything new or interesting in the past decade?

Big sound systems for movie theatres (a dying biz) and a new home 3D
sound system.


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

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

--

Rick

 

[rickman]

On 9/18/2014 11:18 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

rickman wrote:
On 9/17/2014 2:25 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com
wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:02:11 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/16/2014 1:58 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair Don Kuenz <garbage@crcomp.net> wrote:
Do you personally use a plastic solderless breadboard for your
prototypes?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=solderless+breadboard

If not, what do you use for your prototypes?

This:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Dolby_SR_breadboard.jpg



It's a Dolby SR prototype of some sort.

Yeah, like I said, I always do PCB from the start. This one just has a
few more white wires than usual. Good thing he had all those
conveniently located vias. lol

Yeah, a real PCB could have been done faster than making that by hand.
And you could order 5 of them. If this was Dolby, the cost of a
quick-turn multilayer board would be trivial.

I'd cut them slack (and give some credit too) considering how old that
thing is. It's actually pretty cool. I had some 70s/early 80s
"Sega/Gremlin" arcade machine boards that all appeared to have been
layed
out by hand with vinyl decals. Every single trace. boards and boards of
74xx series logic circling a z80 or something like that, all done by
hand.
These were production boards, but somebody spend lots of time designing
those boards. Not sure what sort of board layout tools they had back
then,
although they must have existed. Anybody know?

Yeah, PCB layout back then was supported by... I can't think of the name
of the company that made those pads and strips. They made them with
scale factors so you could more easily see what you were doing, 2x and
4x that I recall. You set your design rules by picking the tape width
and the pad diameter. If you were a little tight and wanted to shave a
little off a pad... you shaved a little off a pad. lol

I didn't do layout then, but I've seen the artwork. Xacto knives are
your friends even if it is just for picking up the tracks and pads and
placing them.

I don't think CAD systems were used much even for layout until around
the time the PC hit the scene. I guess the big companies had them...
with "huge" 20" CRTs and light pens most likely. Don't know for sure.

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).

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

--

Rick