steve.howell{at}altium.com.au wrote:
>> And, again, is anyone going to fabricate these and offer them for sale?  Or,
>> am I the only one that's intimidated by the thought of soldering microscopic
>> chip resistors and caps and 100-lead SMD chips?
> 
> Carte Blanche is being prepared for assembly as I type. There will be
> enough of these. The board will go into review soon. Its just going to
> take a little time.
> 
> If you dont wish to assemble one, you are very welcome to buy one pre-
> built. But soldering 0402's is actually a lot easier than it looks.
> With the footprints we use on the card, they are thermally balanced at
> each end. A blob of solder is like a mini wave solder for these
> devices. All I can say is, you really should give it ago. You'll be
> suprised after a bit of practise they go together quite willingly.

Steve,

I have some (hopefully constructive) criticism regarding your web site.

- The photos are gorgeous, but the file sizes are so large that the pages take 
considerable time to load - and I'm on 5Mb/sec. symmetrical fiber.  Might be a 
good idea to opt for a bit lower resolution or color depth?  Maybe the page 
could show something that loads quickly with a link if you want to take the 
hit for 1024x768 32-bit color?

- Perhaps I'm having a dense-day, but you are showing off a lot of cool boards 
  and I'm not clear how to categorize them in terms of (a) which are simply 
designs at this point (i.e. not planned for commercial availability), (b) 
which are planned to offered and (c) which are actually commercial things 
(Altium, etc.) that are being employed by something else.

In particular, I understand that Carte Blanche will be available, but what 
about that neat daughter board that holds the ZIF socket?

On the subject of fabrication, I might be willing to attempt a larger package 
but the little chip resistors and caps scare the wits out of me.  You are 
certainly correct that practice makes perfect, but I don't do enough SMD work 
to be in shape :-(.  My few forays into repair have been suboptimal.

Steve
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32