Designing an expansion board for Amiga

[croupier]

What would be the best program (on a PC or even Amiga(?)) to use for a design of a board for Amiga?

I've been thinking on a solution for my A500T how to integrate a plipbox Ethernet adapter internally and just have the ethernet port visible on the back side of the tower (looking as if a 'standard' ethernet card is present.......).....and it is always good to start a year with a project in mind...

I was thinking of creating a parallel expansion board (2 extra ports) based on this project published on Aminet (http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/IOBoard) and to modify it for 2 parallel ports only (originally supporting also 2 serial ports + RTC)....actually set-up with one port/connectors already adapted for Arduino Nano with the Ethernet shield (to have the Arduino directly plugged on the board to avoid external adapters) and the second port available for other things (using the 25 pin D-connector)....or in my case to use it internally for a sound sampler (usable as a MIC port).....so the main parallel port would be unused and available for connecting printers and other things....

So I have two options....doing it by myself (and therefore in need of a program allowing to create a design of the board usable for production) or find an experienced individual with time and will to create such a board....anyone?

Ah...and as the CIA involved in this is the one controlling also the Floppy (i.e. the DF0: and DF1: boot selection signal) I could include also the boot switch on the same board....

Any thoughts/proposals/ideas?

[strim]

Originally Posted by croupier

What would be the best program (on a PC or even Amiga(?)) to use for a design of a board for Amiga?

(...)

Any thoughts/proposals/ideas?

Personally, I am using KiCAD. It's free and open source, available for all major PC operating systems. It works pretty well even when designing a fairly advanced board (I am doing A4000 CPU card with it).

Screenshot here.

[Yulquen74]

I now design all my boards with Designspark, which is also free, and pretty good.

If you want a really really simple solution, you could use ExpressPCB, but although their somewhat limited and super easy to use software is free, you have to use their facilities to produce the PCB since it uses a proprietary format.

[croupier]

Thanks guys ! Will look into these programs and see what would be the best one for me...

BTW...any ideas on which place is the best for production of such small boards (size and number wise)?

[strim]

Originally Posted by croupier

BTW...any ideas on which place is the best for production of such small boards (size and number wise)?

I'm ordering my stuff at Techno Service. Very good quality, but a bit pricey (about 20 EUR for 4 pcs of this small PCB, and it is the price of PCB only, not including assembly).

But I'm sure there are some local companies in Slovenia that specialise in small production runs. It will probably be cheaper to use a local company.

[chaos]

For a small PCB order in Slovenia, I think your best option is to join the Electronics Engineer's society (Drustvo elektronikov Slovenije, http://www.drustvo-elektronikov.si/), which will batch up multiple orders from members and produce them at a very cheap rate. There is a yearly membership fee though.

Other foreign services I used are SeedStudio and IteadStudio, both pretty cheap and make good PCBs.

As for the PCB software, I mostly use the free version of EagleCAD, very easy to use and a big library of already made parts.

BTW, it's an interesting project, maybe I could help if I find some free time in January

[croupier]

Thanks to both! Will check and see what suits me best...

[Solo761]

I use CADSoft Eagle for PCB design and I've stumbled on http://hackvana.com/ for PCB production. Haven't used them so far, but they look rather cheap.