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Our setup is automated - your files are processed as sent without design review.

This quote is from a fully automated pcb fabrication site, pcbexpress. It's super fast and very cheap but the files are made as is without the DRC checks. https://www.pcbexpress.com/products/order1.php?type=4. In the end, you will need to choose two items from this list: fast, cheap, full DRC review.

I have gone through the quoting process and prototyping / production process with lots of PCB fabs and honestly the costs for prototyping a single unit are extraordinary compared to volume production. Be prepared to spend 20-30x for a single board vs. volume production. The problem with a single board is the tooling and setup costs associated with PCB manufacturing. Also, this ratio really exists for all parts of the market. I've done US manufacturing, China/Taiwan manufacturing, completely automated US manufacturing; it's all the same. There are some costs you just can't avoid when doing PCB manufacturing. Don't believe me, then check out the pricing from a completely automated PCB fab (this is one of the cheapest places for single unit PCB production. Yes, it is in the US but honestly, it is one of the cheapest for a single unit):
http://pcbexpress.com/products/prices.php#4pricing

In terms of schematic capture packages, I've used Eagle from cadsoft (http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ and am very fond of it. The free version will let you do plenty, although I use the profesional version (for work, I didn't buy it myself). There are also free software versions out there, but I haven't used them and can't comment on how well they work, but I'd encourage you to check them out.

(And that's "Printed Circuit Board", not "Polychlorinated Biphenyls"!)

http://www.pcbexpress.com/ or http://www.expresspcb/:

We have both.
Have a look at http://pcb123.com/.
For more stuff look at free CAD tools in the market:
For Windows:
- http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm#2D3DCADSystems /
For Linux:
- http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html/

I prefer to fire up Eagle's Cadsoft (under Linux!) and generate my own gerber and excellon files. I can then send these files to ANY board house I choose.

When creating 2 layer boards and when I don't need super fine spacing I use Olimex (the lowest cost 2 layer with silk screen and solder mask pcb house I have EVER seen!). When I need 4 more or layers I go with the more expensive PCB Express.

Although I think emachine shop sounds great, you can get much cheaper smaller runs of aluminum panels from Front Panel Express. Their prices are very low and their quality is amazing!

- Rod

Where loved ones are remembered: Memoriam.org

What ya wanna do is subscribe to Circuit Cellar the magazine that is today what BYTE magazine was back in the z80 days. Full of articles on using modern, small processors to do "stuff". They also run some great Design Contests supported by various manufacturers that get you a development board and software (and generally extra chips!) for free.
These days, at the low end (less than 100 MHz), there is seldom a need to wire a processor up to much of any peripherals. For example, the motorola Coldfire processors are basically 200+ Mhz 68000 (e.g. 66Mhz with single-cycle instruction execution compared to the 68000's 4-10 cycle instructions) with just about any peripherals you might ever want onboard. Not really sufficient for a JRE, but not bad for just about anything else. Also, they're roughly $10 each in quantity. Many other manufacturers are making similar types of chips these days:
Hitachi processors
Rabbit Semiconductors
Zilog

One of the problems you'll have to deal with if you want to build your own systems is that Wire Wrap is simply unusable in this day and age. Not only is it impossible to find a socket for somthing like the 256-ball BGA that the coldfire comes in, or the more standard 144-pin QFP packages, the speeds make it unlikely you'll be able to use that technology successfully. I've built fine-pitch boards in my garage using photosensitive PCBs, but the best solution is something like PCBExpress or ExpressPCB and get 2 or 3 3"x3" double-sided boards for $60-$80. Even so, building high-speed systems is not for the amateur; laying out a system using PC-133 SDRAM is not something you want to do without a bit of up-to-date layout knowledge. Good luck, hope this gives you some pointers to get started with! /frank

PCI Express, meet PCBexpress. Can you say trade mark infringement?

Seems like a lot of trouble to go to when it's pretty cheap to get small-quantity custom boards done.

The fast-turn prototype shop PCB Express has done some temperature profilings of several toaster ovens. You can see the results here.

Lotsa links here...

First of all, the 2002 Burning Man project I did that involved a couple hundred RGB LEDs spinning in a persistence-of-vision-based nighttime animated display. Here is the best picture of it. This is the page about the development details.

The LEDs I used were manufactured by Kingbright. The model I used, the LF819EMBGMBC, is big (10mm) and relatively bright for an RGB LED. I couldn't find any U.S. retailers that actually told the truth about whether they stocked them, so I ended up buying 400 directly from Kingbright for I think a little more than $2.50 each. I still have a few left.

Atmel AVR microcontrollers are just a few bucks each, easily programmable with the STK-500 programmer, also cheap at around $80. I used the ATMega8, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I imagine the original Slashdotter could use one of the ATTiny MCUs, since it really needs only 3 or 4 I/O lines (fewer depending on how many helper circuits you decide to use).

The boards were manufactured by PCBExpress and I was very happy with them. The CAD/CAM software was Eagle, which except for some crashing/redrawing bugs was really amazing. The version I used was free. I tried to buy it but CadSoft has (had?) a fairly crazy pricing scheme that actually left you worse off in terms of acceptable usage if you paid them money than if you used the free version.

The best part of using the Atmel MCU was that GCC can cross-compile for it. So you're basically writing regular old C code but it runs on a little tiny piece of silicon. You'll want to subscribe to the quite active avr-gcc mailing list. Save every message from Marek Michalkiewicz; in my opinion he's the god of GCC-for-AVR development.

Check this out.