I tried to send this with a small attachment that was the Eagle script for my PROTO library that Howard asked about, but I got this message from the list server: > Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients: > > Recipient address: piclist@mit.edu > Reason: SMTP transmission failure has occurred > Diagnostic code: smtp;554 5.7.1 Executable attachments not accepted > Remote system: dns;pacific-carrier Which is strange because I thought I did this with another Eagle library a few weeks ago without problems. Is there any way to have the list server minds its own business and stop trying to protect stupid people from their stupidity? Anyway, here is the text only of my reply to Howard: Howard Winter wrote: > The idea of having the prototype area at the front with the > pre-installed parts behind sounds good, however I'm not clear what the > physical layout of your pad-strips would be. 11-30V O-O-O-O-O 5.5V O-O-O-O-O 5.0V O-O-O-O-O O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O 5.0V O-O-O-O-O GND O-O-O-O-O O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O | | | | | O O O O O GND O-O-O-O-O Except picture this 50 columns wide instead of the 5 I've shown. All holes are .1" apart in both directions. The vertical strips are each 5 holes connected together not connected to anything else. The horizontal strips are busses. This is similar to the common "protoboards" that have wire sockets on .1" grids. > My suggestion would be a pair of horizontal bus strips (not connected > to power - leave that to the user) Most of the time you will want them connected to power. In fact I don't think I've ever used a protoboard where I didn't use the two busses as power and ground. Still, I could connect the power busses via jumpers that could be cut in the rare cases where someone wants to use them for something else. This can't be done with the ground busses since each pad just connects to the ground plane on the top layer. There have been a lot of good suggestions here, but I also don't want to throw in too many kitches sinks. > I presume you'll have pads at the back of the prototype area connected > to the PIC I/O pins, to make patching to them neat and easy? Yes. These will be double pads for each I/O port line. These are shown on page 2 of the schematic. > I feel it would be useful to have some patterns that are not 0.1" grid > - putting a surface mount device could be allowed-for by having a small > area with pads for the most common SMT spacings (0.050" ?), fanned-out > to small strips on 0.1" grid, rather like the central part of the > "Surfboard" products such as this: This is now the second or third time this has been suggested, so I'll consider it. I'm a bit worried about board space but I'll consider this once I see where things are at. Maybe the center busses could stop a little short of one end. I could then add a 14 pin SOIC pattern there and hook it up to the vertical strips at that end. It would require losing the inner most pad on the vertical strips, so there would be 4 instead of 5 for those 7 columns. I'll see how/if this might fit later. > The other thing that I always have trouble with on 0.1" boards is > things like D-type and RJ45 sockets, which have the pins o 0.1" grid Actually they're not even .1" within a row either. > but with one row 50% staggered in relation to the other. So a strip of > staggered holes along one edge (also fanned out to "straight" 0.1" > strips) would be really handy! Hmm. This would certainly be useful in just the right circumstance, but it sounds like too much of a kitchen sink to me. > And finally while I'm here: how do you get Eagle to create strips of > connected holes with no components in them? I've attached the script exported from my PROTO library. It's only 9Kb so I think it's OK. ***************************************************************** Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts (978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist