I want to thank everybody again for the interest and good information
regarding this admittedly semi-OT topic. :)

I hope I'm not stretching everybody's patience now, but given your
interest, maybe I can elaborate a bit on where I'm coming from (if
you're pressed for time and only interested in issues immediately
related to OpenBSD, you can safely press Del now ;):

2009/4/6 J.C. Roberts <list-jcr@designtools.org>:
quoted text
>> > For Do-It-Yourself PCB's, you *really* want postscript support.

Yep. But then, I want PostScript anyway. Badly. I've never owned a
(working) PostScript printer in my life and I'm sick of raster image
printers. Sick of 'em. Sick of 'em all. ;)

quoted text
>> > Color support is not necessary, and you can easily get away with
>> > finding a free, used, office laser printer. As odd as it might
>> > seem, some of the old laser printers are actually "better" in the
>> > sense of they were built to last and you can still get parts for
>> > most of them.

quoted text
> On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 15:05:14 -0400 Jason Dixon <jason@dixongroup.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> If the above is correct (and I believe JCR) then I can highly
>> recommend the Brother HL-2170W.  It's inexpensive and has worked
>> great for me with OpenBSD.  Comes with wireless *and* wired
>> networking.
>>
>> http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/ModelDetail.aspx?ProductID=hl2170W

2009/4/6 J.C. Roberts <list-jcr@designtools.org>:
quoted text
> If the real reason for buying a laser printer is PCB work...

It isn't. And actually, I *do* want colour. Currently my only printer
is a Canon BJC-85. That is an *EXTREMELY* slow colour inkjet, and
while it prints ok text documents, its images are fairly atrocious.
Also, it's *EXTREMELY* tedious to refill. Think hunching over the desk
and using a syringe to slllllloooooooooowwwwwly drip-feed refill ink
into its cartridge tanks. Or pay an arm and a leg for consumables that
just aren't worth it. My existing printer's only advantage? It's
portable. But I haven't even got a laptop anymore (other than an
ancient PowerBook that has neither a USB nor a parallel port). So I
could kind of use a new printer. And since my objective it so replace
my current printer, I want colour, because otherwise I'd be tempted to
keep the old one around. So having noticed that colour lasers have
become relatively affordable, I want to kill the maximum number of
birds with the one stone. Here's what I can "afford": I can put one
printer on my birthday wish list. ;) I cannot afford buying a b/w
laser AND a colour whatever, however cheap those two printers might
be.

Discovering the laser printer DIY PCB stuff just put another bird in
my PETA-hating slingshot crosshairs. Some of you may remember that a
long time ago I amateurishly cobbled together a serial shut down
button for a headless OpenBSD box:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=111177380010679&w=2

(The sled software download no longer works, you can either find a
prior version here: http://www.linuxfocus.org/~guido/#sled or maybe
google and see if you can find the sled-0.4.tar.gz version somewhere.
Being able to verify that the code doesn't wipe your hard drive would
also help. No promises.)

Anyway, while I got things to work, I never told you just how terrible
a mess of leftovers and unshielded wires my worse-than-a-ratsnest
Frankencircuit was. Want to see something truly frightening? Behold:

http://imgur.com/J650Q.jpg
http://imgur.com/J66KA.jpg

So of course when I learned that I could bake my very own pretty PCBs,
I damn near wet myself. Imagine: No more weirdly and reluctantly
twisted wires held in place by solder. A neat properly printed circuit
board. That I can lay out any way I darn well please. Heaven.

But wait, there's more: Because I also recently discovered this:
http://www.teuthis.com/daisy/ Portable MP3 sounds kinda tempting. Hey,
I still use a cassette tape Walkman. (I bought 2 cheap MP3 players in
the past but returned them both, because their Flash memory had
errors.) They do sell these as kits here
http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKTET1 , but
$115 USD? Nah. So I installed Cadsoft Eagle on my Ubuntu box, opened
the board file, and selectively extracted only the actual top and
bottom circuits and converted that and came up with this:

http://imgur.com/J7JY2.png
http://imgur.com/J7RNU.png

(If you want to print this, set the ppi to 1200x1200, otherwise it
won't be the correct size.)

The idea is that I could
(a)
buy all the parts:
- PIC microcontroller part number PIC18F45J10-I/P
cf. http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en024619
and http://www.microchipdirect.com/productsearch.aspx?Keywords=PIC18F45j10
- http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs1011.html
http://verkkokauppa.planeetta.net/epages/Planeetta.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shop
s/vlsi/Products/N6N9480
- etc, etc.;
(b)
use a laminating machine to transfer the toner to both the top and
bottom of  double layer PCB stock;
(c)
etch the thing;
(d)
make me on of these, so I can SMT-solder:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/07/how-to-make-a-surface-mount-soldering-iron
/
(e)
dremel and wire and/or solder through the vias
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_(electronics) ) to connect them;
(f)
and SMT-solder the shit out of these motherfucking chips on this
motherfucking PCB.

My biggest concern is that some of the paths are so thin, I'd be
concerned whether I get them reliably masked with enough toner to have
a complete connection -- and whether I can avoid having the acid eat
up the thin circuit pathways from the side during the etching,
breaking the circuit. But hey, if it doesn't work the first time, I
should be able to edit the mask images and make these anorexic
pathways a little healthier.

Sure it's a challenge. If I pull it off it would be a quantum leap up
from the horrors shown above. But hey, if I fail miserably, it's
nobody's loss but my own, right?

And actually, in an ideal world, I'd much rather create an audio
player based on the VS1053 (
http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs1053.html ) than the VS1011, because
MP3 is patent-encumbered and OGG Vorbis isn't. But to do that I'd need
to re-learn electronics, and probably learn embedded programming.
Translation: Way, *way* WAY outta my league. In my wet dreams,
perhaps. One day. Years from now. Maybe.

2009/4/6 J.C. Roberts <list-jcr@designtools.org>:
quoted text
>
> You will probably never be building extremely high-speed PCB designs in
> your garage, so a resolution of 300dpi or better should suffice. Even
> the axis-based mixed-resolution printers (i.e. "600x300" Horizonal/Vert)
> should work fine.

If I really want to print out stuff like the above and have a chance
of different circuits not running into each other, then I will need
the highest dpi resolution I can get. I exported the mask PNGs so
they'd be 1200x1200ppi. That should tell you something.

quoted text
> The things I like about my XEROX DocuPrint N17 are:
> 1.) 1200 dpi resolution

That would be super.

quoted text
> 2.) a paper path for thick card stock
> 3.) network interface
> 4.) postscript support (multiple levels)
> 5.) duplexing
> 6.) very cheap to run

quoted text
> You need to realize laser printers are *not* the only way to do PCB's,
> and some of the inkjet printers are at least equal if not better for
> this task.
>
>
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/08/how_to_direct_to_pcb_ink_jet_r.html
quoted text
>
> (MakeZine has a number of other Home-PCB articles)
> Some people argue that using inkjets is more accurate than laser
> printers since the possible human errors in resist mask alignment are
> eliminated. Also, with inkjet printers, you can even do "silkscreens"
> of sorts on your home built boards.
>
>        "Fashion Is My Only Conscience" ;-)

You're absolutely right, and thank you very much for the link.
However, having looked at the way they're essentially sacrificing a
printer to the cause, and generally seeing the merits and limitations
of both methods, I think that for now, the laser printer toner
transfer method is the one for me. I did however see that Xerox has a
series of solid ink printers, and I'm going to ask them what they
think about the prospects of masking PCB stock with this. Should be
fun. I could tell you if I get an answer if you're interested.

Printer-wise, here's what I've looked at a bit closer:

Xerox:
  Phaser 6110
  USB version 6110V/B: ~199 / RJ45 version 6110V/N: ~259 IE
	 	       ~129	 	  	     ~139 DE
		       ~# 85			     ~# 95 UK

Lexmark Lexmark C540n  ~259 DE

(Brother) HL-2400C     ~$125 US

(NB: WTF, Xerox?! Irish people get to pay 120 more for the exact same
friggin printer?! We all know about "Ripoff Ireland" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip-Off_Republic ), but this is _fucking
ridiculous_. What's that? Taxes? Oh, like a 120 euro extra in taxes
shit sandwich?!? Seriously? I don't believe you, Xerox.)

quoted text
> Lastly, if you're not in a rush, or if you're working on high-speed
> designs, you should talk to your local PCB fabrication house. The silly
> part is many of their customers do not use the entire "blank" so your
> small design can easily be tossed in an unused corner of the blank and
> be manufactured in parallel with orders from other customers. This is
> really cheap to do, since without your order, the wasted space on the
> blank would be tossed out. The cool part about this is you can get
> multi-layer (>2) PCB designs --something you can't do at home-- done
> very cheaply if you're patient, as well as get the benefit of DRC
> testing, X-RAY analysis, Bed-Of-Nails (aka "clamshell") testing, ...
>
> As long as you can "Tape-Out" your design into a supported format (i.e.
> gerber), your local fab house will most likely be *real* friendly since
> it will save them wasted materials, and of course, they just never know
> where the "little business" you offer may lead in the future.

That's a real nice hint. I'll keep it in mind. Of course the free demo
of Eagle can design only really small circuits, or open/print existing
larger files. But Wikipedia tells me that both gEDA and KiCad also
grok gerber files, so this might just work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerber_File

Again, thank you everybody for your interest, and I hope this has not
been too annoying a distraction from our regular scheduled
programming.

Thanks and regards,
--ropers