New (old) subject... grounding... I have worked on a lot of boards in my career... many had split planes, circuit isolation schemes, and various odd grounding schemes... I don't think I have had a single board ever fail due to grounding issues... The thing I want to really get my arms around though is at the system level ground. The overall scheme seems critical to me and it's not really obvious the impacts of certain approaches to solving it and how to hedge your bet so that it is successful regardless of what option you choose. We are currently using a 'Mecca or Star Ground' system on a product with multiple boards and internal power conversion and conditioning that I hear has some advantages and I suspect also some disadvantages as well... what they are all remains to be seen. Is there someone on this forum that really understands system level grounding enough to prevent crosstalk between boards and peripherals and also prevent the generation of EMI issues? What level of protection and what kind of protection is reasonable? He technologies that are employed are audio circuits, digital synthesis circuits, OCXO's and distributed system clocks, High speed DACs, RF equipment, data buses.. well, there's just about one of every type of circuit I can think of in there... How would you approach the grounding scheme on a system like that? What issues would you be concerned about? What things would you do to prevent having problems? Which scheme would give you the best performance and which would be the least expensive? What would be something somewhere in between that would work well but not be overly costly? Inquiring minds want to know. Best regards, Bill Brooks PCB Design Engineer, C.I.D.+ Tel: (760)597-1500 Fax: (760)597-1510 Datron World Communications, Inc. Vista, California --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------