(Thought this needed a separate thread, and in fact maybe should
have been put in an [EE] thread, but anyway...)

I'd just like to put forward *my* view on this DIN/Eurocard issue.

The Eurocard format have been in the electronic industry for
many years, at least as long as I have been, say > 25 years.

It's *mainy* a standard to build rack mounted electronic
equipment, but with the current and constant shrinking of
electronics, there seems to be a little less focus on it today.
(Besides of special derivates like the VME building system, byt
VME uses some special variants of the DIN connectors anyway).

It's a fairly bulky bulding system and most (old) Eurocard
systems was used with parallel-bus (address and data)
bases systems. You know, CPU on one card, RAM on another,
some EEPROM on yet another card, and so on.

The three most common connectors are :
32 pins, two rows with 16 pins on a 0,2" x 0,2" grid.
64 pins, two rows 0.2" apart with 32 pins 0,1" apart (middle row empty).
96 pins, three rows with 32 pins on a  0,1" x 0.1" grid.

Then there are many special types with heavy power pins,
HF koax connectors and such.


Now, due to the simple design of the connectors
themself and also the high degree of standardization of the
hardware (hardly never any problem to mix brands), the
connection system has been popular even amongst hobbyists.
Magazines like Elektor used the Eurocard connectors in many
of theirs early microprocessor/microcontroller projects, but
in recent years there seems to be more single-card designs.


Now back to Olins design...
IMHO, I can't see any larger demand for a Eurocard-style
connector for this kind of board. Maybe a few smaller
"pin-headers" (like on Wouters Dwarf boards). It could even
be simple "unshrouded headers", like the once you use
to create jumper sections. Then you can use a cable with
a socket that is larger then the pin header since it can
stick out on one (or both) sides. This is a prototype
board so you're expected to grab whatever you
happen to have i the junk-box, right ?

Anyway, just IMHO... :-)

Jan-Erik.






-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist