[hpsdr] Sasquatch II

[Philip Covington]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 8:04 AM, Henry Vredegoor
<henry.vredegoor at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Phil, Lyle, All
>
> Reading your mail, the BGA packaging seems to be a show stopper for a DIY /
> non-professional / non-hightech fabrication of a PCB with respect to costs.
> I know there are solutions to convert a Ball Grid Array to a Pin Grid Array,
> a sort of small daughter-PCB that has the BGA pads on one side and pins on
> the other side.
>
> One example:
>
> http://www.mill-max.com/products/newproducts_detail.cfm?pid=7
>
> This would allow you to use a conventional type PCB for the rest of the
> circuit.
> Don't know if such a thingy could reduce the costs (-enough) to make this a
> possible solution?
>
> 73
>
> Henry.

Hi Henry,

Many of those adapters are *many* times the cost of the chips you are
using them with.

You also have the problem of the support components requiring the same
kind of high density design.

The high density, micro via, blind via, 6+ layer PCBs are not a
problem if you expect to sell 10K+ units or have a big research
budget.  For the home experimenter, it is different.  That's why most
of the experimenter/hobby SDR stuff revolves around the PC.

That's why I tend to lean to the COTS stuff for the DSP processor
(like a mini(nano,pico)-ITX board).

73 Phil N8VB

 1229004981.0