Homebrew PCBs

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:28:49 +0100, Leon Heller  
<leon.heller@...> wrote:

>
> PCB-Pool has a full version of Target on their web site, but I don't  
> think
>
> it generates Gerber and drill files. They can make PCBs directly from the
>
> Target PCB files.

Yes they have.
I could not find a license agreement, but i expect it is not allowed to  
print out the layout and make your own boards from it.
Remember this is a full version costing a lot of money regularly.


> Both Easy-PC and Pulsonix have lower-cost pin-limited versions which  
> allow
>
> boards of any size.


Pulsonix is still way out of my budget, even with limit. i have not  
checked easy-pc.

The 700 pin license i have is enough for all i do (although with high  
pincount CPLDs and FPGAs one would soon reach this limit).
Only disadvantage is the panelizing feature does make the duplicated pins  
count, so i can not panelize many boards or it will go over the limit. Not  
a problem for me i can always do that in a image editor and i don't need  
panelized gerber. They may have changed that already for the new version  
since it was discussed as beeing a problem.

I've made more money out of it already than the 150eur it did cost, so  
that's fine with me.
The prices do tend to increase unreasonably steep for increasing pin  
numbers (you pay much more than double for double the pin count), which i  
don't find very clever because it would make it very hard for me to  
consider an update. But that seems to be so with most packages.


ST