Homebrew PCBs

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Dave wrote:

> Markus,
>   I hope the more experienced people answer this as I am just a beginner
> at this so my needs are quite minimal at the present time. This is more
> of a hobby for me. Single sided boards with less than 250 pins (for now
> anyhow) and NEVER more than a 2-sided board.

Never say never! This time last year, I thought I would never have made a
PCB with a surface mount component, let alone a board exclusively SMD
including a 0.4mm pitched LQFP-80. And yes, I'm considering 4-layer boards
now after the time it took to lay this board out to get a half-acceptable
groundplane!

I'm glad I started with PCB, because it meant I didn't need to go through
re-learning how to make PCBs with some other software when I did start
making more complex things. Within 3 months of making my first PCB, I
built a homebrew Z80 based computer on a 160x100mm eurocard - that needed
almost 500 holes. None of the "free with lots of restrictions" packages
can make this modest homebrew computer.

The other thing I really appreciate about PCB it its hackability -
documented text save files are great for running through scripts, as well
as working better with version control software.