pcb board design for the cray-2 circa 1985
jtlien
When I started working at Cray in 1985…
The state of pcb board cad was this. All the boards were being drawn by hand using colored pencils on transparent paper with a square grid printed on it. The drawings were digitized by counting the number of grids in length for each line. There were 8 directions in the 45 degree routed boards so a letter A to H was used to designate with direction you line went in.. So a line the horizontal direction to the right for 8 grids was an A8. Four grids at 45 degrees to the riight was B4 etc. Programs that ran on pcs converted these numbers directly to Gerber. Later on we switeched to P-CAD and a Telesis autorouter.
- Shared November 8, 2012