I concur, this became a clear necessity after a few revs of a few 
designs.  I put it in the copper for the prototype if it is going to be 
done w/o silkscreen.  Funny how many proto revs it takes sometimes to 
get to production ... serial # gets written with sharpie into a 
silk-filled rectangle, and hardware rev is in silk somewhere nearby.

Another thing I've done if there are spare PIC pins - code the hardware 
rev by tying several to VCC or GND.  Then the software can read the 
hardware rev, and do whatever differently.  Then you get to have one 
source file work across (minor) hardware changes, and sometimes be 
backwards-compatible as well.  And have the latest software fail 
gracefully if accidentally put on a too-old hardware rev...

J



Matt Pobursky wrote:

> On Mon, 8 May 2006 16:45:35 -0700, Chops wrote:
> 
>>Um.  Do people version-control their board files, complete with
>>something visible on the board?  that seems like it would be a
>>good idea :-(
> 
> 
> Of course we do. Every PCB I design has both the bare circuit board 
> part number and revision in the copper. It's on the film (gerber files) 
> for the PCB too. I have lots of products with multiple revision levels 
> that accumulate over the years and without these markings it would be 
> difficult (or at least very error prone) to determine if you have the
> correct PCB/artwork/gerber files for a given production run.
> 
> Matt Pobursky
> Maximum Performance Systems
> 
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