[hpsdr] Bare Boards

[Mark Ericksen]

I would like to support what is said below.  I would love to build these 
boards, but at my age, with my poor eyes and shaky hands I don't think I can 
do it.  I don't have a microscope anyway.  I have therefore logged a request 
fot a set of assembled boards.  I am looking forward to using them with my 
SDR-1000 radio.  I hope at some point a case that can house these boards is 
made available.

I have been wondering about a few things.

1.  Will there be any warranty associated with the assembled boards?  Is 
there any way to purchase a warranty?

2.  What if one of the boards that I receive is DOA.  How could I get it 
replaced if it is defective through no fault of my own.

3.  If one of the boards becomes defective at some point is there anyone 
willing to repair it, for a fee of course?

I sure miss my Heathkit days. :-(

Thanks

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Tracey" <bill at ewjt.com>
To: <hpsdr at hpsdr.org>
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 12:37 AM
Subject: [hpsdr] Bare Boards


> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> I'll admit to being surprised at the amount of interest in bare boards,
> turns out to be running a bit higher than I'd expected it would be.
>
> I'd be interested to hear from the folks looking at the bare board option
> their reason for going that route.  Is it a cost issue?  Or really want to
> know the technology and figure building the board helps in getting to know
> how it works?   The ship building feeling one gets putting something like
> this together?
>
> I'll admit I like building these things.  Having built two sets of these
> and done major repair work (FPGA replacement) on one, I'll happily go the
> built and tested route on this round of boards.    As others have pointed
> out, these are not beginner SMT boards.   The first set I did,  I did w/o 
> a
> microscope using a fine tipped iron.  Doable but right at the margin of my
> skills w/o a microscope.   The 2nd set I did with a microscope and a mix 
> of
> fine tipped iron and hot air and paste technique - this one was much 
> easier
> with the microscope - I'll never consider doing 100+ pin 0.5mm pitch parts
> w/o a microscope ever again.     The other parts on the board that are
> somewhat troublesome to hand assemble are some of the resistor packs which
> are a leadless package (Personally, I do hope there's a special place in
> hell for the geniuses that came up with leadless packages)
>
> I don't mean to discourage anyone from going the bare board route if that
> is what they want to do.  Just interested in folks reasons for building
> their own and want to make sure folks are aware how small/tight pitched
> some of the parts are.     Actually I'd hope to recruit some of the folks
> with the skills and tools to build this kind stuff by hand to get involved
> in some of the future projects.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bill  (kd5tfd)
>
>
>
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