On Oct 3, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Howard Winter wrote:

>> most commercial designs have 7-8 versions before committing to a
>> volume purchase.

That seems high to me.  I think we were more line line with Olin's
estimate last time I paid attention (but that was quite a long time ago,
when boards had far fewer layers...)

>
> why do a lot of the board houses have the so-called Prototype
> minimum of 5 pieces?

It makes the price per board seem better.  They wouldn't be able
to charge you much less for a single board anyway...
(It's certainly easy to find use for 5 boards if they're somewhat
close to working.  A board with a bunch of jumpers added is MUCH
better than nothing for the software guys to start hacking on.)

BillW
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