Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] hi from new subscriber

[Jamie Morken]

Hi John,

> It would be great to have readily available hardware that would
> suit the needs of software-defined radio experimenters.  But
> a "custom board" would not be particularly useful.  We'd have
> great free software that could be used by thousands or millions,
> but only two or three individual boards to use it with.
> 
> If you would build a board that someone would reliably produce and
> support and sell to anyone who wanted it, that would be what we really
> need.  Then we could discuss what ought to be on such a board.

Perhaps I was unclear when I said "custom board".  I agree 
having hardware like this widey available is necessary for your project
to be a success.
I have contacts where I can get boards made and assembled for
very reasonable prices reliably and on demand.  I just send the 
printed circuit board files and a bill of materials and they send back
assembled boards for a reasonable price.  I know any useful board
would probably have a processer, fpga, high speed DAC, high
speed ADC, low noise amplifier and a power amplifier but don't 
know the details of what is wanted (like size of fpga required,
type of processer required etc. etc..)

The manufacturer I deal with for my board production is Olimex ltd.
http://www.olimex.com/pcb/index.html

Let me know what you want in a board and I will try to make it.
Does the ADC/DAC interface right to the amplifiers or is there an
analog modulation/demodulation so that the ADC/DAC interfaces
to the image frequency?  Can you make a flexible protocol radio
if you modulate the carrier wave with analog electronics?
Obviously you will have to use some analog modulation/demodulation
for carrier frequencies over 100Mhz or so.

Here is a 200MSPS 8 bit ADC
http://www.national.com/pf/AD/ADC08200.html

Here is a 135MSPS 14 bit DAC
http://www.national.com/pf/DA/DAC14135.html

cheers,
Jamie Morken