Date   : Mon, 12 Sep 2005 23:53:11 +0100
From   : jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
Subject: Re: 101 uses for a speech system (number 47)

Sprow <info@...> wrote:
> Not quite, rather that the PCB size was a fixed design parameter, as was the
> desire to use all DIL components. You run out of space quite quickly that
> way.
 
I wanted the PCB that size specifically so that it could be
mounted on a drive, rather than floating around at the end of two
ribbon cables.
 
> As I was doing the layout for JGH, his requests get higher priority. I'd
> have probably gone for a programmable logic device and all surface mount,
> but that's just me, and means it's no longer made from off-the-shelf parts.
 
I specifically wanted not to use a programmable logic device,
because it means that you have to have a programmable logic device
programmer before you can even consider thinking about building
the interface. I wanted a design that anybody could build with
just a soldering iron, regardless of whether I had fallen under a
bus and taken cruicial parts of the design with me.
 
Every design but one that I found on the Internet for various IDE
interfaces were built around a PLD, and were consequently utterly
unconstructable because there was no way somebody could walk into
Bardwell's, Farnel's or Maplin's and get the cruicial part that
these designs put almost the entirety of their design into.
 
Particulalry annoying when the design essentially boils down to a
small handful of gates that fit into 80p's worth of ICs.
 
I specifically wanted non-surface mount components so that anybody
who was comptent with a soldering iron could build it, not PCB
construction freaks with specialist surface-mount construction
equipment. If I had enough money for surface mount equipment, I'd
spend it on computer equipment, or food, or the motgage, not SMT
tools.
 
-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...                - mdfs.net/User/JGH
BBC IDE Hard Drive Interface - http://mdfs.net/Info/Comp/BBC/IDE