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hardware

Started by FallingFrog Dec 10, 2001 at 2:16 PM 6 replies 600+ views

Original Post

Dec 10, 2001 at 2:16 PM

How difficult / expensive is it to design a circuit board? I''ve heard that it''s actually possible to create your own custom design and have it printed for you. However, I''m not sure what the price of that might be, and additionally, rather than learn how to design a circuit board myself, I''d rather like to find a friend to do it for me. I''d like to design this board to do a particular calculation in the inner loop of my raytracer that involves 42 bitwise calculations in a row. The circuit to do this would be very simple. In the future, perhaps it will also be possible to put the whole inner loop of the raytracer in hardware, which would yield a much bigger speedup, and even better, if the whole Trace_Ray function could go into hardware, and perhaps done in parallel by a whole bunch of simple processors, I''d have more than enough power to do realtime radiosity... but I''m getting ahead of myself. Any ideas?

EvilCrap

Dec 10, 2001 at 6:44 PM

yes: go to radioshack =)

krez

156

krez

Dec 10, 2001 at 10:52 PM

you can buy a kit to etch your own circuit boards at radio shack. all you really need is the board (plastic with thin copper on both sides), a sharpie marker, and the proper type of acid (which i forget, but it comes in the box). you draw on the copper wherever you want your "wires" to be, and the rest is burned away by the acid. i don''t recall how much it costs, but it was fairly cheap (as i bought many of them when i was young and living off of allowance).
now, you can''t use that if you plan on mass producing them (it would take you too long), but if you have an idea for the circuitry you can build a prototype and test it in your computer (and pray you did it right so you don''t see the black smoke).

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

kurifu

Dec 10, 2001 at 11:13 PM

There are many ways to do this...

Wire wrap boards, printed circuit bords, or those weird breadboard like boards where you should solder wires to the holes that you put the components in.

I went to RadioShack and purchase a PCB kit for $21 CDN. Needless to say that it is a beautifull unit, but not needed.

Get a dry erase marker, almost any will work (or go get an etching marker). Buy some etchant, and a cheap ziploc contaner to poor everything in.

All you need now is to purchase the copper circuit boards, draw the circuit on with the marker, but it in the etchant, than rinse the board when it is properly etched (do not keep it in too long), and than remove the marker.

Voila, a completed printed circuit board.

As for professional printing, you would have to call about that.... sorry, I can not help you there.

Gamedev''s AI Auto-Reply bot.

OctDev

Dec 11, 2001 at 5:56 AM

You can send a file to some companies and they will create boards/chips for you. I designed a processor in a hardware class and the prof said if anyone wanted to get their''s made, he could give them the info. I never got it but I am sure you could look around. We were using Logic Works, I am sure Xilinx files are accepted too. You can get both really cheap as student versions (<=$60).

--OctDev

FallingFrog

Author

FallingFrog

Dec 11, 2001 at 6:33 PM

Wow, that''s pretty cool- sounds easy enough

meZmo

Dec 11, 2001 at 6:47 PM

If you''re in college (or know someone who knows someone..) it''s usually possible to get a couple of cards produced for free (providing your own plates). It''s really an easy process.

vicker

Dec 27, 2001 at 5:03 PM

Then again, you could ask me

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