Wayne Parham Messages: 18791 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Resistor-ladder DACs were the very first kind. You can actually make one with a parallel port and a series of precision fixed resistors configured as voltage dividers. Each bit has its own resistor, all tied together. Just send the digital stream to the serial port and the resistors sum to create a voltage output.
So the key really is to have very precise resistor values. Nothing else about it is tricky or expensive. You could even buy a bunch of inexpensive resistors and measure them yourself to hand-pick the exact values, sort of like tube matching.