>> Eurocard has been one suggestion as a form factor. While I personally >> love Eurocard, the boards and connectors are expensive. >> >> Stackble connectors are a pain in assembly. >> >> Backplanes are inherently evil at high speeds. >> >> Plugging everything into one main board makes that a critical design >> item and that much harder to upgrade.
I agree with all of the above. I think what we want is simply a mechanical standard. Something that will simply hold everything in place. What if every module was in it's own metal box? Each box has a forward or "user facing" panel that is tall and narrow and contains things like input jacks and status LEDs and a rear facing panel that is for power and module to module interconnect. Many of the modules, I assume would work as stand alone gadgets (a trigger is a usful device all by it self) To assemble a system you place all the boxes like books on a shelf. Maybe even some book end so they don't fall over. But you might build a wood cabinet, put a handle on top and metal bumpers on the corners. The wood cabinet would house the modules and also the power supply and the rats nest of interconnect wiresSo those who like to be neat can make nice wood cases and the rest of us can have a working system made of a half dozen boxea and cales all over the work bench Here is an example of a module box http://www.hammondmfg.com/pdf/1455L1601.pdf We would not have to specify a height or length, only the width needs to be uniform. But in our case the width becomes height when you turn them on edge. Some modules might need two PCBs and a wider box. We should make a list of connectors to be used for power and so on for the rear pannel I had previously suggested about the same thing but only to make the box the same size as a disk drive so we could use common existing racks. I'd still prefer that but maybe these hammond boxes are more popular -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.