Eurocard systems-8008 to transputer

The advent of low cost, high performance CAD systems, and the arrival of the transputer, are seen as having major impact on the future of Eurocard systems. For some years Sension has manufactured systems that are part Eurocard, part custom-designed PCB. The wide availability of powerful CAD systems has dramatically lowered the cost of custom-designing, so there is now much more of a tendency to meet even a limited requirement by producing special PCBs. However, the Eurocard approach still scores if the production run is short, or the intrinsic benefits of standardisation and field repairability are important. The eventual impact of the transputer is more difficult to judge. Certainly, it takes Eurocards into areas where considerable processing power is needed: and it enables functionality to be transferred from hardware to software, reducing overall project timescales