Annie,

As I read your description, it seemed to me that perhaps
what might make more sense would be a two-part PC board,
with the connector half being a relatively heavy, perhaps
even crude, all through-hole and possibly one sided
affair, that had all the terminal blocks and a card-edge
connector. That could be solidly anchored to the fram--
er, benchwork, and could easily be designed to withstand
ham-fisted screwdriver operators. Your controller board
could then be 100% surface mount, small and compact,
and simply slide in and out of the terminal-block frame.
If you have power regulation circuitry on the controller,
that could probably go on the terminal block board as well.

It probably would cost a little more, but I would imagine
that it could just about eliminate connector-related
failures of the controller board; the termination device
would be relplacable probably at lower cost and be repairable
by an amateur with any old cheap soldering iron. You might
find people wanting to have multiple controller cards that
simply slide in and out for different programming, say the
weekend schedule, the rush-hour schedule, the late-night
schedule, etc. One could also have an extra for when one
is working on an upgrade to the programming while having
a stable, known-to-work version around to use when people
want to see one's layout.

I liked the idea enough to pull up AutoCAD and
sketch out what I was talking about; take a look at
ftp://ftp.drzyzgula.org/pub/forannie.jpg -- most of it
should be fairly obvious if I've done a decent job of
drawing it. On the two long sides are card-guide slide
bearings, and on the end of the slot is a card-edge
connector that mates with the pads on the end of the
controller card.

Just a thought, you're probably too far along to make this
big a change, but it might solve the problem in a way that
added some new features as well.

FWIW.

--Bob

On Tue, Jul 20, 1999 at 01:29:17PM -0700, Anne Ogborn wrote:
> I have a strange situation with the connectors.
>
> This gizmo goes under a model RR layout, and has
> sensors, speaker, power, etc. hooked up to it.
> These all come in from different places.
>
> The user can field reprogram the unit, which they
> might do a fair number of times while getting it
> set up. Each time they do this they have to pull it
> out and take it to a PC to program it.
>
> So either they have to plug in a bunch of things,
> in the dark, and possibly getting them mixed up,
> (and the cables can't be given different connectors),
> or they have to plug them into something and
> have that something plug into the unit with a single
> connector.
>
> I'm avoiding either ugly solution by using a connector
> sold as a 2 part terminal block. The header IMC mounts
> to the board. The screw terminal block plugs into this,
> and they can be stacked with interlocking dovetails.
>
> So, my end user brings the wires togather, interlocks
> the terminal block plugs, and plugs the whole mass into
> the card.
>
>
> --
> Anniepoo
> Need loco motors?
> http://www.idiom.com/~anniepoo/depot/motors.html

--
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Bob Drzyzgula                             It's not a problem
bob@drzyzgula.org                until something bad happens
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