DIY standards II

[Jim Johnson]

Let me cheer on Harry and his efforts and sentiments...

I'm (still) a wannabe DIYer.. even though I have a moldy EE degree (was
seduced to software early in my career, didn't get much practical EE
experience). You'd think I'd be a perfect candidate for building synths..
but I haven't. The reasons are - 

- decent looking front panels are hard to build without a machine shop, or
tons of effort...
- hand-wired boards turn me off completely, thanks to my failed attempts to
build a vocoder on vectorboard in college.

And that's about it! If someone were to make available these components
(panel and PCB) for things like Juergen's scanning interpolator, I'd buy
'em - as long as they conformed to some reasonable set of _loose_
standards, so I wouldn't have to track down things like a +- 18V supply,
etc. There are some things that we'll never agree on - jacks, for one (I'm
a banana guy) - so in that case, I'd urge leaving some room for flexibility
- for example, holes drilled for 1/8" jacks, but spaced such that 1/4"
would fit, if the hole were enlarged, etc.

There's no reason that those who design need to be burdened with the
development of standardized components - as with any group effort, it's
best that everyone do what they do (and like) best. Surely we have people
who love to do PC board design, those who love panel design, etc. As long
as they have permission to work with other's designs, and we're all clear
that nobody's making a profit on it...

If anyone asked me to propose a standard, (which no one has), here's what
I'd suggest:

- All modules using +- 15 v and +5 volts, with connectors that follow the
MOTM/Blacet standard.
- All front panels in FracRak format, or full 19" panels for larger things
(like the ASM-1, etc.)
- All panels drilled for 1/8" jacks, with spacing to accommodate larger
jacks.

What can I contribute to this effort? Little. Maybe I could finance a run
of boards or panels (not a lot). But I'd buy stuff.
 
Jim Johnson 
Metaphoric Software
-------------------
Makers of Techno Toys
Software for Electronic Music
http://www.technotoys.com
info at technotoys.com

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/3/99 at 1:15 PM Harry Bissell wrote:

>Harry Bissell writes: "voluntary" standards. 
>
>JH. I'm quite comfortable with vectorboard and push-pin terminals. Half of
my modular was built that way. The drawback is that it is precisely what
you mentiioned "one-off". It takes as much time to build a second one as
the first. And for a "newbie" its out of the question.
>
>I considered using a standard single-sided copper "proto-board" from some
company like "Mouser" or "MCM" or even once upon a time "Radio (gag)
Shcak". With common Bus connections and "three per pad" they let you do a
pretty good job. But documentation takes longer than it takes for me to
layout a PCB. (I'm quick...) And again, a newbie can't follow easily. Both
point to point and "semi" point to point are hard to troubleshoot unless
you have a lot of practice.
>
>I have no commercial aspirations... but if I get a schematic from a list
member (or one of mine) I can knock out a board at lunchtime or after hours
at work, with no qurstions of "what project is that" and I can't do that
with veroboard. Likewise, at home its easier to jump on the computer than
get into a soldering project. 
>
>What I'm suggesting is that the DIYers don't spin their wheels. Some of us
excell at design, some debug, some at documentation and archiving, and some
just at moral support and asking questions that stimulate research.
"Standards" should be rejected the moment thay stifle the creative engines.
But I'll make up some PCB's (designs and maybe even order some...)if people
are interested. I just want to know how peol;pe like to mount them.
(parallel to the panel, perpendicular to the panel, 3x5, 1.75"x 17.25"
etc.)
>
>Keep those cards and letters comming folks. When the thread ends I'll
write a summary of the comments.   :-) harry
>
>jh <jhaible at primus-online.de> wrote:
>Bureaucracy is the end of all creativity ...
>Standards can be as well. I've seen the pro's and con's of introducing
>standards in a big company, and I feel that sometimes the pro's outweight
>the con's, but not *that* much. But standards for a distributed community
of
>DIY builders ? No way.
>I don't even have a standard for my own stuff I've built over the years.
>I set myseld standards for a limited peroid, like building that JH-3
synth,
>or building 19" modules. Just to find that little table top boxes or
>stomp boxes can have their benefits, too, and that I wanted a whole
>new synth with a patch matrix rather than 1/4" jacks. Or the JH-4:
>Intended to hold 4 modules at the width of a 5 octave keyboard.
>What now ? Just one module finished. Thought about building a
>MS-20 clone to fit into that standard. Better than 19" at least.
>
>As for PCB layout - it was this list which convinced me to give up
>making layouts. And I had a quite advanced technique to design
>very dense single sided layouts, as the people who got the JH-4
>filter stuff might have seen. But what is it good for one-offs ?
>Yes, it's good for sharing the designs, but then it takes a lot of
>time to create it,and I might be able to share 5 designs without
>pcbs in the same time. What would you prefer ?
>I highly recommend using veroboards, and mounting the components
>as you would on a printed board, i.e. no bunch of loose wires, but
>make the connections at the bottom as if it were copper tracks.
>Takes a little longer than a "wild" veroboard, but much faster than
>making a pcb layout.
>
>If you have fun making good layouts, it's a good thing of course.
>I recently was given a pcb from Jörgen that was a pleasure
>to look at, densely populated to get max functions on minimum 
>space. Very nice. 
>
>But what good would it be to make a pcb
>layout that is much larger that one could build on a veroboard ?
>With nothing more than straight copper connections between 
>components that are loosely spread across a large board ?
>
>What I mean is if you have making multiple modules in mind
>(like Gene's famous ASM), or even something commercial,
>go for an optimized layout (and forget about anybody's standards).
>But if you only build for yourself and share the design, don't
>waste your energy and time.
>
>JH.
>
>
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