Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Creating PC boards

A

anonymous

Jan 1, 1970
0
So Im wanting to make a few boards to try out some notions. I can create the
layout but am not sure how to proceed from there. Should I buy a kit from
somewhere? Contact a company? Remember - I will likely want < 5 of any
specific layout.

What DIY kits to people recommend?
 
B

Bob Masta

Jan 1, 1970
0
T

Thomas P. Gootee

Jan 1, 1970
0
David Harmon said:
On 28 Sep 2004 00:42:32 -0700 in sci.electronics.basics,
[email protected] (Thomas P. Gootee) wrote,

To hell with all yahoo groups. Please keep the discussion public and
accessible on usenet.

David,

Your point is a VERY, very (very!) good one.

Probably the MOST-valuable information resource that I've EVER
*FOUND*, by far, is the Usenet newsgroups' SEARCHABLE ARCHIVE, now
located at http://groups.google.com (formerly at www.deja.com,
formerly known as www.dejanews.com), which basically has ALL traffic
from ALL groups, from all the way back to the beginning of the Usenet
(around 1980?) (Although I'm not sure if they have any archived
traffic from the ARPANet, which I *THINK* was probably Usenet's
predecessor, before DARPANet (defense-related) was split off from
ARPANet [IIRC: "ARPA" stands for "Advanced Research Projects Agency"],
which we had through our "early" Unix systems, using uucp, in the EE
building when I was at Purdue in the mid-to-late 1970s.)

It does cause me some fairly-grave "concern", when there is a lot of
excellent, important information being discussed, in a group that's
somewhere else, on line, that's then NOT going to be a part of the
searchable newsgroups archive.

There was a discussion, in the Homebrew_PCBs group, about that VERY
same concern, not too long ago. I don't remember seeing any good
conclusion to it. But I kind-of *suspect* that since Yahoogroups is
driven by advertising, there might even be some objection, on Yahoo's
part, to, for example, re-posting all of the message traffic, from one
of their groups, in a Usenet newsgroup [which I would like to see done
JUST so it would be available during searches of the newsgroups
archive. If I recall correctly, the yahoogroups message archives
don't even show up in WEB searches, either. What a WASTE!].

That was just a guess, though. I haven't bothered to "read the fine
print", yet. BUT, if there ISN'T any legally-binding-type of reason
NOT to do it, it seems like it would be a worthwhile project. However,
another problem with yahoogroups is that it seems like there's also no
good way to "dump" the entire archive of one of their groups. Even
searches of a group's message-archive, there, return results from only
a small range of message-numbers, at a time (making their
archive-searching practically USELESS, at least when compared to
http://groups.google.com).

So, even if it were "allowed", it would probably be pretty tedious, if
one wanted to try to re-post all of the archived messages to Usenet,
from even one heavily-used Yahoo group. Automating the process,
somehow, might make that problem "go away", though. Otherwise,
dividing the task among lots of people, each one downloading and
re-posting to Usenet just a small segment of the message archive of a
yahoo group, MIGHT be a more-feasible alternative.

ON the other hand, for the Homebrew_PCBs yahoo group, for example, I
receive the "digests" of all of the message traffic, via email. And I
have saved them ALL (so I can much-more-easily search them, from
within MS Exchange). Unfortunately, I joined that group only
relatively recently. BUT, if there were someone who joined when the
group was NEW, who also has saved all of the digests, then BINGO, the
messages would all be readily available for re-posting. (Or, maybe a
group's OWNER has a much better way to do it...)

Oh well. It's something to think about, I guess. But, even though you
are quite right, I, myself, wouldn't, as a practical matter, forego
being a member of some of the yahoo groups that I belong to, not just
for THAT reason, anyway, because: they are simply too important to me.
(Another GREAT one, to me, for example, is the TekScopes group.)

So, what to do? I'll try find time to check into whether it is
possible/legal/etc to re-post their messages, either to Usenet or,
failing that, to a website. I think I'll also see if I can get
anywhere, in trying to contact someone there, to at least try to find
out why their groups' message-traffic isn't even available in
web-search results. I realize that yahoo and google (and the other
search-engine companies) might be "arch-rivals", or something like
that. But it SEEMS like they would welcome more hits/traffic, no
matter where it came from, etc etc. (But I really just have NO
idea...)

Hmmm... I *DO* have a friend from high school who was one of the
original founders of Yahoo, or at least was THERE, in a fairly
high-level position, back when they started (I never got the exact
details about his original position, there. But I do remember that he
sold out, for at least tens of millions, just before the big tech
crash, a few years back, hehe. He was at our 25-year H.S. reunion, in
2000.). So maybe I could contact him and at least get a quick rundown
of "why or why not" (something could be done about it), etc, and maybe
even a good internal contact, there. Worth a quick attempt, at least,
I suppose. But I guess I wouldn't hold my breath...

Or, hehe, we could all try to convince everyone to use the Usenet
newsgroups, instead. Just kidding. THAT seems like a
MUCH-more-difficult proposition. There's also the fact that a yahoo
group can be started by anyone, almost instantly (for free), which
seems to be at least one fairly-major "advantage" that they have, over
the Usenet newsgroups. The group-owner can also then set operational
parameters for their group, such as whether it's public or private,
etc. Anyway: It just doesn't seem like they're going to "go away", any
time soon. So I hope that SOMEONE can come up with a more-general way
to make their information-content available for at least SOME
more-public type of searching, at least for the content of the
NON-private groups.

SOrry to have created such a large post, about what some might
consider a trivial issue. But, having seen the **incredible** value,
and sheer "POWER", that has resulted from the creation of the
searchable archive of the Usenet traffic, it does NOT seem
unimportant, at ALL, to ME.

Anybody else?

Regards,

Tom Gootee

http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg

------------------------------
 
R

Rich Webb

Jan 1, 1970
0
On 30 Sep 2004 11:27:27 -0700, [email protected] (Thomas P. Gootee)
wrote:

[snip...snip...]
Anybody else?

Heartily concur; good post. (Although I'll admit that I was *so* tempted
to quote the entire article and then stick a "Me too!" at the end. ;-)
 
M

Michael Monteith

Jan 1, 1970
0
I've found many of the posts from my Yahoo group through a Google
search. So the messages do show up. Everyone has their favorite way.
You can find as many that swear by news groups. Most just swear at
Yahoo. lol But I post to both to help both arenas and reach more
people.

Michael

David Harmon said:
On 28 Sep 2004 00:42:32 -0700 in sci.electronics.basics,
[email protected] (Thomas P. Gootee) wrote,

To hell with all yahoo groups. Please keep the discussion public and
accessible on usenet.

David,

Your point is a VERY, very (very!) good one.

Probably the MOST-valuable information resource that I've EVER
*FOUND*, by far, is the Usenet newsgroups' SEARCHABLE ARCHIVE, now
located at http://groups.google.com (formerly at www.deja.com,
formerly known as www.dejanews.com), which basically has ALL traffic
from ALL groups, from all the way back to the beginning of the Usenet
(around 1980?) (Although I'm not sure if they have any archived
traffic from the ARPANet, which I *THINK* was probably Usenet's
predecessor, before DARPANet (defense-related) was split off from
ARPANet [IIRC: "ARPA" stands for "Advanced Research Projects Agency"],
which we had through our "early" Unix systems, using uucp, in the EE
building when I was at Purdue in the mid-to-late 1970s.)

It does cause me some fairly-grave "concern", when there is a lot of
excellent, important information being discussed, in a group that's
somewhere else, on line, that's then NOT going to be a part of the
searchable newsgroups archive.

There was a discussion, in the Homebrew_PCBs group, about that VERY
same concern, not too long ago. I don't remember seeing any good
conclusion to it. But I kind-of *suspect* that since Yahoogroups is
driven by advertising, there might even be some objection, on Yahoo's
part, to, for example, re-posting all of the message traffic, from one
of their groups, in a Usenet newsgroup [which I would like to see done
JUST so it would be available during searches of the newsgroups
archive. If I recall correctly, the yahoogroups message archives
don't even show up in WEB searches, either. What a WASTE!].

That was just a guess, though. I haven't bothered to "read the fine
print", yet. BUT, if there ISN'T any legally-binding-type of reason
NOT to do it, it seems like it would be a worthwhile project. However,
another problem with yahoogroups is that it seems like there's also no
good way to "dump" the entire archive of one of their groups. Even
searches of a group's message-archive, there, return results from only
a small range of message-numbers, at a time (making their
archive-searching practically USELESS, at least when compared to
http://groups.google.com).

So, even if it were "allowed", it would probably be pretty tedious, if
one wanted to try to re-post all of the archived messages to Usenet,
from even one heavily-used Yahoo group. Automating the process,
somehow, might make that problem "go away", though. Otherwise,
dividing the task among lots of people, each one downloading and
re-posting to Usenet just a small segment of the message archive of a
yahoo group, MIGHT be a more-feasible alternative.

ON the other hand, for the Homebrew_PCBs yahoo group, for example, I
receive the "digests" of all of the message traffic, via email. And I
have saved them ALL (so I can much-more-easily search them, from
within MS Exchange). Unfortunately, I joined that group only
relatively recently. BUT, if there were someone who joined when the
group was NEW, who also has saved all of the digests, then BINGO, the
messages would all be readily available for re-posting. (Or, maybe a
group's OWNER has a much better way to do it...)

Oh well. It's something to think about, I guess. But, even though you
are quite right, I, myself, wouldn't, as a practical matter, forego
being a member of some of the yahoo groups that I belong to, not just
for THAT reason, anyway, because: they are simply too important to me.
(Another GREAT one, to me, for example, is the TekScopes group.)

So, what to do? I'll try find time to check into whether it is
possible/legal/etc to re-post their messages, either to Usenet or,
failing that, to a website. I think I'll also see if I can get
anywhere, in trying to contact someone there, to at least try to find
out why their groups' message-traffic isn't even available in
web-search results. I realize that yahoo and google (and the other
search-engine companies) might be "arch-rivals", or something like
that. But it SEEMS like they would welcome more hits/traffic, no
matter where it came from, etc etc. (But I really just have NO
idea...)

Hmmm... I *DO* have a friend from high school who was one of the
original founders of Yahoo, or at least was THERE, in a fairly
high-level position, back when they started (I never got the exact
details about his original position, there. But I do remember that he
sold out, for at least tens of millions, just before the big tech
crash, a few years back, hehe. He was at our 25-year H.S. reunion, in
2000.). So maybe I could contact him and at least get a quick rundown
of "why or why not" (something could be done about it), etc, and maybe
even a good internal contact, there. Worth a quick attempt, at least,
I suppose. But I guess I wouldn't hold my breath...

Or, hehe, we could all try to convince everyone to use the Usenet
newsgroups, instead. Just kidding. THAT seems like a
MUCH-more-difficult proposition. There's also the fact that a yahoo
group can be started by anyone, almost instantly (for free), which
seems to be at least one fairly-major "advantage" that they have, over
the Usenet newsgroups. The group-owner can also then set operational
parameters for their group, such as whether it's public or private,
etc. Anyway: It just doesn't seem like they're going to "go away", any
time soon. So I hope that SOMEONE can come up with a more-general way
to make their information-content available for at least SOME
more-public type of searching, at least for the content of the
NON-private groups.

SOrry to have created such a large post, about what some might
consider a trivial issue. But, having seen the **incredible** value,
and sheer "POWER", that has resulted from the creation of the
searchable archive of the Usenet traffic, it does NOT seem
unimportant, at ALL, to ME.

Anybody else?

Regards,

Tom Gootee

http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg

------------------------------
 
M

Michael Monteith

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hey, expresspcb is great. Free software and getting a few first trys
out is relatively cheap. Usually the others either get you on the
software or get you on the onesie twosie stuff.

Michael
 
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