gEDA-user: Outsourcing PCB layout

[msokolov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Sokolov)]

Hello fellow gEDA/PCB users,

I hope this post is not too off-topic/inappropriate for this list.  I
have an open source hardware design (an SDSL hacking board) that's
getting close to entering the layout phase, and I will soon need to hire
someone to do the PCB layout.  (I have to outsource it because it's a
task well outside my skills range.)

Right now I'm just looking for a very rough guess order-of-magnitude
estimate of how much this is going to cost me, so that I can tell
whether I can foot that bill on my own or if I'll need to procure some
sponsorship before this project can proceed.  It's a totally non-
commercial open source hardware design, I share the design freely with
the world and I'll do the same with the PCB and Gerber files which I'll
be paying someone to create, and if I do make and sell any physical
hardware units, I'll sell them for the cost of production without any
profit margin.

If anyone here does PCB layouts for hire, I would appreciate it if you
could take a quick look at my summary below and give me a rough
approximate estimate of how much you would charge to do this layout.
I would prefer for it to be done in PCB so that the resulting product
will be in an open source format, but nonetheless my main overriding
concern is cost, so in the admittedly unlikely case that person A offers
to do it in PCB, person B offers to do it in some proprietary format and
person B charges significantly less than person A, I'll have to go with
person B - but again I think that scenario is very unlikely because I
would imagine that those into proprietary tools are likely to be more
commercially-minded, be less friendly to non-profit hobbyist open source
projects and charge more.

Summary of the board design that needs to be laid out:

* Schematics: 10 B-size sheets; the circuit complexity should be roughly
  equal to that of an average DSL "modem" of the older generation that
  hasn't been shrunk down to one chip.
* Estimated board size: I would like to fit it into a 130x165 mm 6 layer
  PCB if possible (again matching the average DSL "modem").
* No BGAs, 3 QFPs, the rest is mostly SOICs, TSOPs and SMT discretes,
  very few TH parts.
* MC68302 microprocessor (QFP) with 20 address lines and 16 data lines
  wired, non-multiplexed; these buses need to go to two 8 bit wide SRAM
  chips, two 8 bit wide flash chips (covering the 16 bit wide data bus),
  the SDSL transceiver chip (only 8 address lines and 8 data lines) and
  an FPGA (13 address lines, all 16 data lines).
* A lot of synchronous serial data and clock signals for the SDSL data
  path, including 4 muxes.
* Mostly digital, but there is a small analog section between the SDSL
  transceiver chip and the jack.
* No RF, the fastest signals would be the M68K bus which I may want to
  run at up to 25 MHz.

Additional documentation:

Project home page:

http://ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG/OpenSDSL/

Schematics as they stand currently:

http://ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG/OpenSDSL/OSDCU/OSDCU_schem.pdf
http://ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG/OpenSDSL/OSDCU/OSDCU_schem.ps

The design is done in uEDA, my own offshoot of gEDA which I'm in the
process of polishing up for release.  I don't expect the person hired to
do the PCB layout to mess with uEDA, but I can export the netlist in the
PCB format as well as a bundle of PCB elements for all components.

Design spec (very detailed):

http://ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG/OpenSDSL/OSDCU/hwdesign.txt

That's all I have for now.  I hope someone is willing to do the PCB
layout for a price I can afford. :-)

MS


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