I would like to figure out what each component on the duemilanove board is. The ArduinoBoardDuemilanove page distributes EAGLE files but after looking around for a while I found no free software (open source if you prefer that term) to open them. Is EAGLE capable of creating PDF extracts of those files so that people could get component placement information without having to use non-free software?
Eagle is available for windows and linux for free. Of course this is not free as in open source but free like in free beer. Why is this not sufficient?
I hit bugs every day. I get a headache if I'm not allowed to fix them and distribute the fixes to others.
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/download.htm
EAGLE is free (with some size limitations for which you need the non free version) but for arduino and small electronics uses it is great!
Mowcius
I hit bugs every day. I get a headache if I'm not allowed to fix them and distribute the fixes to others.
Why can you not do that? Or is it just that you want to send other people PDF files?
Mowcius
Why can you not do that?
The copyright holder CadSoft Online has not given me the permission to distribute these modified (fixed) versions of EAGLE.
Ahh you mean EAGLE bugs. I thought you meant board design bugs...
Umm not sure then. I have never had any issues with EAGLE myself but I have not used it much.
Maybe there is somethere you can send the bug fixes to so they can fix it on the 'official' version of EAGLE.
Mowcius
Maybe there is somethere you can send the bug fixes to so they can fix it on the 'official' version of EAGLE.
Unfortunately that is too uncertain for me.
Anyways, I guess if I had extra time it would be an interesting project to reverse-engineer the Duemilanove board layout 
Hmm - your headaches are only going to get larger as time passes; we are lucky that Eagle has a free version for available, period - whatever platform its used on. I understand where you are coming from (I too, personally wish all software was free as in GPL'd - but we live in the real world, unfortunately).
Something you might think about, though, is that Fritzing has the ability to export to Eagle...So what would be the effort needed to make it possible for Fritzing to import an Eagle file? I am software developer, so I know that it isn't an easy task, but it is one that a lot of people who use Fritzing would love to see.
I downloaded
but it just says "This will soon provide an export of your Fritzing sketch to the EAGLE layout software". Is there some newer version that actually implements the export functionality?
Hmm - probably not, then; I have only been playing with it for a few days (nothing serious), and saw that it had that option in the menu - if you are seeing that, then it is likely not supported yet (they should grey out that option). Sorry to get your hopes up. At least the possibility is there, though...
Is EAGLE capable of creating PDF extracts of those files so that people could get component placement information without having to use non-free software?
EAGLE can export BMP-Images, and OpenOffice can create PDFs that contain BMP-Images.
Eberhard
Today I noticed that it is not possible to search for text in the published PDF schematics. I did some manual OCR and added searchable labels to
Any chance to get this uploaded to the main arduino.cc site so that also other people could search for text?
I continued by drawing a really rough sketch of where each component is by tracing digital camera photos. The end result
is not very pretty but made me notice one new issue: The board has two 47uF capacitors but the schematics do not talk about such capacitors. Are there different revisions of the same board? Is it possible to get a more up-to-date schematics or should I start to reverse-engineer that too? 
For such a simple schematic I don't see the point of having searchable text....
For such a simple schematic I don't see the point of having searchable text....
It's the first step for importing the schematics to kicad so that I can modify it to reflect the components that really are on the board (read: those 47 uF capacitors).
For such a simple schematic I don't see the point of having searchable text....
It's the first step for importing the schematics to kicad so that I can modify it to reflect the components that really are on the board (read: those 47 uF capacitors).
Give me a break. The first step to making kicad-based design files for Arduino is to put up with your "OMG, EAGLE just isn't free enough" headaches long enough to modify/examine/export appropriate data from the "original source material." EAGLE is capable of exporting all sorts of info including parts lists, net lists, component placement data, and more. I would NEVER trust a PDF to be an accurate representation of a complex CAD file; it would give me headaches.
is a bitmap export of the board. You can find netlist, partlist and pinlist in the same directory. They all seem to contain the same flaw as the PDF does: they do not talk about the 47 uF capacitor.
The board has two 47uF capacitors but the schematics do not talk about such capacitors.
The 47uF capacitors you see in board photographs and some (?) production boards are shown as 100uF in the current schematics and PCB layout (Hmm. Also in NGDM and even usb_v2 schematics.) They're the ones at the input and output of the voltage regulator. These are filter supply caps with the "bigger is better, until they stop fitting or get overly expensive" characteristic, and the use of 47uF caps probably reflects unfortunate manufacturing realities. (but assuming a reasonable power supply, values as low as 10uF would be OK according to the regulator data sheets.)