"Horror" is the correct description of my first thought. EDA is such an inherently graphical task, a gui seems natural. But you apparently did without, so maybe I can too? Is uEDA public yet? I'd like to check it out. If you could write a non-gui PCB layout tool, I'd be even more impressed. -Alan
On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Michael Sokolov <msoko...@ivan.harhan.org> wrote: > I've already posted this great news on the relevant project mailing list, > but I thought I'd post it here too: > > Almost 5 months ago Peter Clifton <pc...@cam.ac.uk> wrote here: > >> Thanks. I had quick a look through, and I must say, the SDSL unit is a >> very impressive project - far more complex than I'd imagined. >> >> Good luck with it, and thanks for the example. > > Well, I have some news: I have finally got this board physically built > (sent gerbers to fab, got PCBs back, populated one of them) and it works! > So far I only have the CPU subsystem populated (not the SDSL part yet), > but I still find it amazingly cool that I have an MC68302 microprocessor > system designed by me, it's running at ~16.67 MHz with no extra wait > states, 16-bit SRAM and flash, I've got a working serial console port > and I'm talking to it: my own little M68K debug monitor running on my > very own hardware design! > > The following factoids make this success even more amazing: > > * It's my very first hardware design, and I chose something of this > complexity rather than some toy traffic light controller or somesuch. > > * Being unhappy with the too-much-GUI-for-me EDA programs like gEDA, I > wrote my own non-GUI, non-WYSIWYG, totally Makefile-driven EDA system > (uEDA) to make this board and others in the future, and this board > project is naturally uEDA's first. GUI-indoctrinated "professional > hardware engineer" types may scream in horror at the thought of > non-GUI, non-WYSIWYG EDA, yet I've designed a board of this complexity > with it and it works! > > * Being a great fan of the UNIX Way of Doing Things (tm), I have used M4 > footprints wherever possible in direct contrast to the strong > admonitions against their use that are frequently expressed on this > mailing list. Having heard comments like "I have had to throw boards > out because of those awful M4 footprints", I naturally had some > trepidations when I took the PCB and the box with parts to the > assembly shop. But the people there didn't complain about any > footprint problems, and when I had asked them specifically, the > assembler told me they were fine. Oh, and I had completely skipped > the common step of printing the board on paper and checking the parts > against it, I had simply crossed my fingers and sent the gerbers to > the fab. :-) > > * Aside from some initial confusion resulting from the assembly shop > having populated one of the SOICs backwards (I take some blame there > too for not having inspected it visually before applying 5V), > everything worked exactly right on the first try! I had the code for > the microprocessor ready well before the PCBs arrived, so when I had > the board assembled, I went straight to the device programmer to burn > two 29F040s, popped them into the PLCC sockets, applied power and > guess what, instead of magic smoke coming out there is a working > interactive monitor prompt on the serial port! > > A lot of kudos go to Ineiev too as it's his PCB layout - great job! > > MS > > > _______________________________________________ > geda-user mailing list > geda-user@moria.seul.org > http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user > _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user