Re: gEDA-user: Need help repairing a damaged FPGA board (GR-PCI-XC2V)
On 1 March 2010 22:00, Timothy Normand Miller theo...@gmail.com wrote: A relatively new professor here at OSU had one of these FPGA boards: http://www.pender.ch/docs/GR-PCI-XC2V_product_sheet.pdf Unfortunately, some students recently fried part of the power regulation circuit. We don't have the expertise to repair it ourselves, and we don't have the budget to buy something new. This board was being shared by multiple students, one of whom was using it for his masters thesis work. So its loss is rather painful and problematic. Any suggestions and help would be most appreciated! Get your professor to enrol on the Xilinx University Program: http://www.xilinx.com/univ/ (The) Xilinx University Program includes no charge access to our full suite of software tools and special academic pricing for university boards. Cheers Gareth (fair disclosure: I work for Xilinx) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA user: gnetlist -gdrc buffer overflow and gnetlist -gspice-sdb killed
On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:30:12 -0300, Facundo Ferrer facundo.j.fer...@gmail.com wrote: Hi I was working on my thesis project and I'm designing a 6-bit flash converter. The circuit has 63 comparators (made by me) , 63 inverters (made by me) and 1 decoder (126 inputs and 6 outputs, also made by me). I have a source file for each component (actually more than 127 files because the decoder has nand gates made by me). When I try to check my circuit with drc or drc2 gnetlist finished with a buffer overflow. I don't know how to solve this. Also, I tried with spice-sdb but gnetlist finish with Killed. I'll have a look at this tomorrow evening and see what I can do. Here are the links of the output: - using drc: http://pastebin.com/GrJL6pi9 - using drc2: http://pastebin.com/UnYk1f8a - using spice-sdb: http://pastebin.com/MpWjqVq8 If you need my schematics I will send you. Please e-mail me your schematics off-list. Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 02:01:51AM -0500, DJ Delorie wrote: Do they even make SOT-23 sockets? For matching, can you just press them onto a pcb carrier? Something that plugs into a breadboard, and gives you three big copper pads to contact? Assuming holding them down with your finger or even just letting gravity do the work, it might be sufficient. From my experience, gravity is insufficient. The contact quality is too poor if you don't have anything to press the device against the pads. I was testing at ~1GHz, but it should not affect that much, except that you need some plastic stick insted of a finger (too much disturbance, probably stray capacitance). Gabriel ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 22:50:29 -0800, Donald Tillman d...@till.com wrote: This particular project uses some analog IC design styles implemented with hand-matched discrete transistors; diff amps, current mirrors and so forth. So I'd need an efficient way to hand-match surface mount transistors. With TO-92's I can just slap them into a rig and collect them into batches. Surface mount? I dunno. Do they even make SOT-23 sockets? The usual approach is to buy SMT packages containing 2 or 4 transistors on a single piece of silicon (i.e. literally back-to-back on the wafer). They're invariably well-matched enough for all but the most ultra-precise applications, in my experience. These devices are used in designs for mass production, where manually matching the transistors wouldn't be practical. Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 10:35:22AM +, Peter TB Brett wrote: On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 22:50:29 -0800, Donald Tillman d...@till.com wrote: This particular project uses some analog IC design styles implemented with hand-matched discrete transistors; diff amps, current mirrors and so forth. So I'd need an efficient way to hand-match surface mount transistors. With TO-92's I can just slap them into a rig and collect them into batches. Surface mount? I dunno. Do they even make SOT-23 sockets? The usual approach is to buy SMT packages containing 2 or 4 transistors on a single piece of silicon (i.e. literally back-to-back on the wafer). They're invariably well-matched enough for all but the most ultra-precise applications, in my experience. Indded. Another important point is that you won't end up with devices operating at different temperatures which is crucial for differential circuits (Vbe of a bipolar transistor drops at about 1.5 to 2mV per degree, even cheap op-amps have offset drifts in the few µV/° range, thanks to the input transistors being close on the same substrate). Gabriel ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA user: gnetlist -gdrc buffer overflow and gnetlist -gspice-sdb killed
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 12:24 +0900, timecop wrote: Please kindly use computers from this century. I'm not sure what this comment relates to, or whether it is intended to be constructive, humorous or otherwise.. Nothing I've seen suggests the machine Facundo is using is particularly old. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA user: gnetlist -gdrc buffer overflow and gnetlist -gspice-sdb killed
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 00:23 -0300, Adrian Pardini wrote: On 01/03/2010, Facundo Ferrer facundo.j.fer...@gmail.com wrote: [...] The output was quite differente in drc2 check. Now the gnetlist finish with 'Killed' instead of 'Buffer overflow' but anyway does not create the netlist (the same output for drc2 and spice-sdb backends). After that I realize that there is a 1.6.1 version (I didn't found before I think there are bad links into the web) I repeat the same steps but the problem persists. A detail that previously I didn't mention is that some times (all versions tested 1.4.3 1.6.0 1.6.1) after I ran gnetlist -gspice-sdb ... and crash with Killed my windows manager crash too and I have to reload it. That sounds a lot like the OOM killer jumped in. What do you see if you run dmesg after having gnetlist crash? This is the best hint we have yet.. I'd not thought of the OOM killer, and was about to write the WM crash off as not our problem, or perhaps bad ram. Sounds like gnetlist is really struggling with the multiple schematics - this could perhaps be an inefficiency in how the guile back-ends are written, or something similar in the core gnetlist code. As a work-around, try ensuring you have a decent amount of swap available, and expect the computer to get very slow when it is using it! Best wishes, -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 17:00 +0530, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. I'm sure there will be one available somewhere - if not, you will have to create the symbol. (Creating symbols is a normal part of electronic design entry). Searching 555 in gschem's schematic window found an LM555, which appears to have the same pinout. For future reference, you will find a useful resource of additional symbols here: www.gedasymbols.org As for a SPICE model (or any other simulator model), I've no idea where you would find that. Typically, these kinds of simple circuits ought to be designed / chosen using basic engineering approximations. The data-sheets tell you enough about how the device operates to be able to calculate the time periods it switches etc., calculate currents in components. Simulation should be a second stage - verification (if used at all), not a primary design tool. What kind of performance differences are you hoping to evaluate between the various circuits? offtopic So says the person looking for software to perform 3D finite volume / MoM, in a transient simulation for marine wave / float interaction - because I _can't_ build a huge experiment... we had this: http://www.tridentenergy.co.uk but it capsized :( /offtopic Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Unless you need the _exact_ operating point, just calculate it.. it is very easy. (And you'll probably find it difficult to get an LED spice model, and / or match the parameters to your particular device). I = (Vcc - Vf) / R Which, e.g. might be: Lets assume your LED has Fwd voltage drop of 2.7V (check the data-sheet), and wants a forward current of 15mA. The voltage across the LED is roughly fixed when the appropriate current is flowing, so subtract that from the supply voltage and get the voltage across the resistor. I'll assume your power source has negligible internal impedance, but if not - that needs to account for a part of R calculated below. 15mA = (5V - 2.7V) / R 15e-3A = 2.3 / R R = 153 Ohms Picking a near preferred value, let R=150 Ohms Current will then be (5-2.7) / 150 = 15.3 mA Seriously - simulating for things like this is not going to be the best way to design circuits.. physical variation between parts, and discrepancies between the model and reality, plus limited choices of real-world resistor values will mean it is pretty pointless trying to get any more accurate than what I've just calculated above. Best wishes, -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Donald Tillman [1]...@till.com wrote: On Feb 27, 2010, at 3:57 PM, John Luciani wrote: I use two different footprints. Both footprints have the pins inline. One footprint spaces the leads 1.39mm the other 2.60mm. The 2.60mm is the common formed lead pattern. I believe I used the spec from On-Semi. I use a finished hole size of 29mils. The fab tolerance is +-4mils. Hey John, Thanks for that. Researching this a little more... Fairchild's TO-92 spec says that the leads are rectangular, 0.46mm by 0.38mm, and the diagonal there works out to 23.5 mils. With a little extra room for tolerance, yeah, a 29 mil hole sounds good. But with 29 mil holes spaced 50 mils apart, that doesn't leave enough room for the pads and the space between. Maybe 7 mils each. So breaking away from the 50 mil grid by just a little bit and moving the outer legs 5 mils beyond allows the DRC to work. I use 1.39mm for the non-formed leads (apx 55mils). (* jcl *) -- You can't create open hardware with closed EDA tools. twitter: [2]http://twitter.com/jluciani blog:[3]http://www.luciani.org References 1. mailto:d...@till.com 2. http://twitter.com/jluciani 3. http://www.luciani.org/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... 2010/3/2 W.H. Kalpa Pathum [1]callka...@gmail.com Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... [2]http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com [3]http://thiraya.wordpress.com [4]http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list [5]geda-u...@moria.seul.org [6]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:callka...@gmail.com 2. http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com/ 3. http://thiraya.wordpress.com/ 4. http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa 5. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 6. 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
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
I forgot it: as you are just interested in simulation, there's another program, called Qucs (also available in the official Fedora repos), more accurate and proffesional than Ktechlab, although it is more difficult to learn (and let me say it's uglier too ;-) ). And I think there's no 555 device defined in Qucs, so you'll need to design it or find it somewhere. PS: you do have a 555 defined in Ktechlab 2010/3/2 W.H. Kalpa Pathum [1]callka...@gmail.com Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... [2]http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com [3]http://thiraya.wordpress.com [4]http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list [5]geda-u...@moria.seul.org [6]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:callka...@gmail.com 2. http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com/ 3. http://thiraya.wordpress.com/ 4. http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa 5. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 6. 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
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
2010/3/2 Miguel Sánchez de León Peque msdeleonpe...@gmail.com: For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... wow this app suits my requirement. Thanks Thanks for all you foryour quick and friendly responses. KTechlab was more that enough for my requirement. It seems that the other apps including gEDA are move advanced and need a lot of effort in learning. We will be having a module on circuit simulation in near future. They use Spice and I hope to use ng-spice as I'm much more interested in FOSS. So once again thanks for you all. 2010/3/2 W.H. Kalpa Pathum [1]callka...@gmail.com Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... [2]http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com [3]http://thiraya.wordpress.com [4]http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list [5]geda-u...@moria.seul.org [6]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:callka...@gmail.com 2. http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com/ 3. http://thiraya.wordpress.com/ 4. http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa 5. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 6. 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 -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
2010/3/2 Miguel Sánchez de León Peque msdeleonpe...@gmail.com: I forgot it: as you are just interested in simulation, there's another program, called Qucs (also available in the official Fedora repos), more accurate and proffesional than Ktechlab, although it is more difficult to learn (and let me say it's uglier too ;-) ). And I think there's no 555 device defined in Qucs, so you'll need to design it or find it somewhere. PS: you do have a 555 defined in Ktechlab 2010/3/2 W.H. Kalpa Pathum [1]callka...@gmail.com Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... [2]http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com [3]http://thiraya.wordpress.com [4]http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list [5]geda-u...@moria.seul.org [6]http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user References 1. mailto:callka...@gmail.com 2. http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com/ 3. http://thiraya.wordpress.com/ 4. http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa 5. mailto:geda-user@moria.seul.org 6. 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 -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Mar 2, 2010, at 10:57 AM, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... wow this app suits my requirement. Thanks Thanks for all you foryour quick and friendly responses. KTechlab was more that enough for my requirement. It seems that the other apps including gEDA are move advanced and need a lot of effort in learning. We will be having a module on circuit simulation in near future. They use Spice and I hope to use ng-spice as I'm much more interested in FOSS. Urr? SPICE has always been freely available. I remember downloading it and building it on a VAX easily twenty years ago. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Dave McGuire mcgu...@neurotica.com wrote: On Mar 2, 2010, at 10:57 AM, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... wow this app suits my requirement. Thanks Thanks for all you foryour quick and friendly responses. KTechlab was more that enough for my requirement. It seems that the other apps including gEDA are move advanced and need a lot of effort in learning. We will be having a module on circuit simulation in near future. They use Spice and I hope to use ng-spice as I'm much more interested in FOSS. Urr? SPICE has always been freely available. I remember downloading it and building it on a VAX easily twenty years ago. But they don't offer a linux version I guess. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Mar 2, 2010, at 11:08 AM, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... wow this app suits my requirement. Thanks Thanks for all you foryour quick and friendly responses. KTechlab was more that enough for my requirement. It seems that the other apps including gEDA are move advanced and need a lot of effort in learning. We will be having a module on circuit simulation in near future. They use Spice and I hope to use ng-spice as I'm much more interested in FOSS. Urr? SPICE has always been freely available. I remember downloading it and building it on a VAX easily twenty years ago. But they don't offer a linux version I guess. I'm pretty sure I built it under Ultrix, which is an early BSD UNIX derivative. I know I built a FORTRAN version under VMS, but I'm pretty sure I built one on Ultrix. SPICE 3f5 is the latest Berkeley release, and this is (if I recall correctly) the release from which ng-spice is derived. 3f5 does build under Linux, I think. But regardless, ng-spice is pretty much real SPICE, so you're on the right track! Lots of companies have grabbed the free SPICE, made vendor-specific enhancements, and released it as a binary-only product (usually for one specific company's rickety, proprietary operating system) and often not for free. This doesn't mean SPICE isn't free. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Dave McGuire mcgu...@neurotica.com wrote: On Mar 2, 2010, at 11:08 AM, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: For simple circuit simulation, you can use Ktechlab (directly su -c 'yum install -y ktechlab'). It's not very fast, not very accurate, but very graphic and simple. It may fits for your purpose... wow this app suits my requirement. Thanks Thanks for all you foryour quick and friendly responses. KTechlab was more that enough for my requirement. It seems that the other apps including gEDA are move advanced and need a lot of effort in learning. We will be having a module on circuit simulation in near future. They use Spice and I hope to use ng-spice as I'm much more interested in FOSS. Urr? SPICE has always been freely available. I remember downloading it and building it on a VAX easily twenty years ago. But they don't offer a linux version I guess. I'm pretty sure I built it under Ultrix, which is an early BSD UNIX derivative. I know I built a FORTRAN version under VMS, but I'm pretty sure I built one on Ultrix. SPICE 3f5 is the latest Berkeley release, and this is (if I recall correctly) the release from which ng-spice is derived. 3f5 does build under Linux, I think. that's news, thanks :-) But regardless, ng-spice is pretty much real SPICE, so you're on the right track! Lots of companies have grabbed the free SPICE, made vendor-specific enhancements, and released it as a binary-only product (usually for one specific company's rickety, proprietary operating system) and often not for free. This doesn't mean SPICE isn't free. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 21:46 +0530, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: SPICE 3f5 is the latest Berkeley release, and this is (if I recall correctly) the release from which ng-spice is derived. 3f5 does build under Linux, I think. that's news, thanks :-) But regardless, ng-spice is pretty much real SPICE, so you're on the right track! Lots of companies have grabbed the free SPICE, made vendor-specific enhancements, and released it as a binary-only product (usually for one specific company's rickety, proprietary operating system) and often not for free. This doesn't mean SPICE isn't free. ;) Unfortunately, most spice course I've seen use P-Spice, as the de-facto standard. The models may not be completely compatible with ng-spice, so your mileage will vary. Gnucap is another advanced simulation environment which might be interesting. It is different to spice, but can accept spice syntax and models etc.. Again, milage will vary as to how well it works with a given model - and it is by no means a drop in replacement for spice, some things are just done differently. Al might chime in and give more info if I've got anything wrong here, as I'm certainly not an expert - and Al ought to know, since he writes Gnucap. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 21:46 +0530, W.H. Kalpa Pathum wrote: SPICE 3f5 is the latest Berkeley release, and this is (if I recall correctly) the release from which ng-spice is derived. 3f5 does build under Linux, I think. that's news, thanks :-) But regardless, ng-spice is pretty much real SPICE, so you're on the right track! Lots of companies have grabbed the free SPICE, made vendor-specific enhancements, and released it as a binary-only product (usually for one specific company's rickety, proprietary operating system) and often not for free. This doesn't mean SPICE isn't free. ;) Unfortunately, most spice course I've seen use P-Spice, as the de-facto standard. The models may not be completely compatible with ng-spice, so your mileage will vary. Gnucap is another advanced simulation environment which might be interesting. It is different to spice, but can accept spice syntax and models etc.. Again, milage will vary as to how well it works with a given model - and it is by no means a drop in replacement for spice, some things are just done differently. Al might chime in and give more info if I've got anything wrong here, as I'm certainly not an expert - and Al ought to know, since he writes Gnucap. yeah but I hope to read some extra and be with ng-spice or gnucap. Thanks -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user -- W.H.Kalpa Pathum ... http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com http://thiraya.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/callkalpa ... ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Making circles in PCB
Hi DJ, On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 23:17 -0500, DJ Delorie wrote: It can't be that simple or else someone would have done it alreay. Maybe it is, there's so many little things people want that we few developers just don't have time to work on them all. Give it a try, maybe you'll succeed. You certainly won't succeed if you *don't* try. Any clues where to start adding code ? I did look into some files yesterday like action.c , draw.c and create.c , but couldn't find a nice starting point for adding a command circle. Kind regards, Bert Timmerman. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
Hi there, I've recently stumbled upon this: http://geekwentfreak.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/spice-gschem-gnetlist-gnucap-gwave-gspiceui-linux/ Hope it helps, Denis Am 02.03.2010, 12:30 Uhr, schrieb W.H. Kalpa Pathum callka...@gmail.com: Hi, I'm an electrical engineering student and I'm new to gEDA. I'm given a project and I've got several circuits. I want to simulate rather than soldering them all actually so that I can choose the best circuit. I use Fedora 12 and I have installed ng-spice also. My circuit has a NE555 timer and I couldn't find a symbol for NE555 in gEDA Schemetic Editor. So how can I find a circuit. Next is, I designed a simple circuit with a power source, LED and a resistor. I wanted to simulate the circuit and see the voltage across the resistor. But I couldn't find how to do it. So if you can provide me with a simple step by step guide on how to do this that would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 11:38:00AM +0100, Gabriel Paubert wrote: On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 02:01:51AM -0500, DJ Delorie wrote: For matching, can you just press them onto a pcb carrier? Something that plugs into a breadboard, and gives you three big copper pads to contact? Assuming holding them down with your finger or even just letting gravity do the work, it might be sufficient. From my experience, gravity is insufficient. The contact quality is too poor if you don't have anything to press the device against the pads. I was testing at ~1GHz, but it should not affect that much, except that you need some plastic stick insted of a finger (too much disturbance, probably stray capacitance). And at the DC extreme, the heat of the finger will make any attempt to match offset a joke (other parameters maybe not so much). So, no, usually fingers need to stay away from the DUT. -- There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked. -- Twain ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA user: gnetlist -gdrc buffer overflow and gnetlist -gspice-sdb killed
On Mar 2, 2010, at 8:29 PM, Peter Clifton wrote: Sounds like gnetlist is really struggling with the multiple schematics - this could perhaps be an inefficiency in how the guile back-ends are written, or something similar in the core gnetlist code. As someone who works with big designs in gEDA, I can tell you that gnetlist doesn't scale very well. I would at the very least expect very long run times when processing the kind of expand-hierarchy-before-gnetlist approach Facundo is taking. With more common approaches the slowdown is noticeable, but my computers have been getting faster as my gEDA designs get more ambitious, so it has never been a serious problem for me. I told Ales about this at one of the FreeDaug things years ago, and he said he wasn't surprised, but we didn't get into details. It didn't seem all that important. I believe the poor scaling is in the front end: which back end you use doesn't seem to matter. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Mar 1, 2010, at 7:12 PM, Mark Rages wrote: On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Donald Tillman d...@till.com wrote: Hey folks, What's considered Best Practices for TO-92 packages? Redesign with SOT-23. Easier to solder, faster than stuffing TO-92. Agreed! And really easy to hand solder too! Steve ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Mar 1, 2010, at 10:50 PM, Donald Tillman wrote: On Mar 1, 2010, at 7:12 PM, Mark Rages wrote: On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Donald Tillman d...@till.com wrote: Hey folks, What's considered Best Practices for TO-92 packages? Redesign with SOT-23. Easier to solder, faster than stuffing TO-92. Sheeshe... I probably will go to surface mount at some point. But for now I'm kicking it olde school. If it is for yourself, you might want to try DJ's soldering challenge boards. http://www.delorie.com/pcb/smd-challenge/instructions.pdf I also practiced on broken motherboards, for rework and such. This particular project uses some analog IC design styles implemented with hand-matched discrete transistors; diff amps, current mirrors and so forth. So I'd need an efficient way to hand- match surface mount transistors. With TO-92's I can just slap them into a rig and collect them into batches. Surface mount? I dunno. Do they even make SOT-23 sockets? I recall hand matching transistors at various times, and found it rather ineffective, let your parts warm up to operating temperature! The suggestions about using matched pairs in a single package are going to help you get much better results. I had to do my matching to build op-amps and and diff amps from scratch. We matched our transistors really close near perfect but it still was not as good as the matched pairs we put in to the circuit as the next step. As for the statements that we were being elitist in suggesting SOT-23, I did not intend that, in my experience to-92 in a manufacturing environment today is an avoid. From maneuverability if you have lots of components to populate then your going to need to determine the capabilities of the manufacture house, and those through holes are most likely going to drive your costs up, as a pick and place machine will be able to do the surface mount parts really quickly. I know that our quick turn houses hand solder the through hole components and like charging extra ;-) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
Seriously - simulating for things like this is not going to be the best way to design circuits.. physical variation between parts, and discrepancies between the model and reality, plus limited choices of real-world resistor values will mean it is pretty pointless trying to get any more accurate than what I've just calculated above. It has been my experience that circuit modeling tools although useful are not able to negate the need to understand the low level principles of the underlying circuit. The better you understand the physics of what is going on the more value you will get from your circuit modelling. All the best, Geoff. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Making circles in PCB
Any clues where to start adding code ? I did look into some files yesterday like action.c , draw.c and create.c , but couldn't find a nice starting point for adding a command circle. For mouse-click stuff, you want ActionNotify() in action.c. That's where mouse clicks go. For non-mouse actions, put it wherever you want :-) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: NE 555 and simulation issue
On Tuesday 02 March 2010, Geoff Swan wrote: It has been my experience that circuit modeling tools although useful are not able to negate the need to understand the low level principles of the underlying circuit. The better you understand the physics of what is going on the more value you will get from your circuit modelling. That is one of the reasons I often recommend using simple models of things instead of the ones you can download. It seems this is not taught in schools like it should be. Instead, they teach professional (ha) tools, often without knowing what professionals use or how they use them. Simulation is very useful as a study aid to help understand the low level principles. Unfortunately, very few texts and very few professors use it this way. They teach simulation strictly for validation, not for exploration, and don't even do a good job at that. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA user: gnetlist -gdrc buffer overflow and gnetlist -gspice-sdb killed
On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 06:17 +0900, John Doty wrote: I believe the poor scaling is in the front end: which back end you use doesn't seem to matter. I know there are a number of cases where the backends are badly coded, and will quickly run out the guile stack using inefficiently recursive algorithms. The fact one has to set the guile stack with (eval-options (list 'stack 20)) is a very sure sign that the backend is falling over in a _really_ bad way. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:46:31 -0800, Steven Michalske wrote: As for the statements that we were being elitist in suggesting SOT-23, I did not intend that, in my experience to-92 in a manufacturing environment today is an avoid. It proves to be easy for the newbie, too. Every once in a while I need to teach completely uninitiated physics students how to solder. I get the impression, that decent thru hole solder joints need at least as much practice as the basic variants of SMD (0805, SOT23, SO8, ...) ---(kaimartin)--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: TO-92 Best Practices
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 6:39 PM, Kai-Martin Knaak k...@familieknaak.de wrote: On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:46:31 -0800, Steven Michalske wrote: As for the statements that we were being elitist in suggesting SOT-23, I did not intend that, in my experience to-92 in a manufacturing environment today is an avoid. It proves to be easy for the newbie, too. Every once in a while I need to teach completely uninitiated physics students how to solder. I get the impression, that decent thru hole solder joints need at least as much practice as the basic variants of SMD (0805, SOT23, SO8, ...) Right. This has been my experience too. SMT soldering isn't really harder than through-hole, it is just different. I don't think it is a big help to beginners to teach them obsolete technology. Of course the tiny 0402 and such are harder, but they are just harder to see and pick up, not harder to solder. Maybe beginners should learn point-to-point wiring of vacuum tube circuits. Those are really easy to see! You can see them operate and even feel the voltages. Once. Back on topic though. I can see where TO-92 would still have a place for testing in a socket. (Although there are SOT23 sockets made, for PIC10 and EEPROMs in SOT23-6. These sockets are about $75.) I have found it essential when using matched pairs of TO-92, to physically attach the pair together to reduce thermal gradients. Heat shrink is OK, epoxy better. Even then, the match is not as good as a dual transistor in SMT. Regards, Mark markra...@gmail -- Mark Rages, Engineer Midwest Telecine LLC markra...@midwesttelecine.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA/gaf Mac OSX screenshots?
On Feb 27, 2010, at 8:17 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: On Feb 27, 2010, at 4:42 PM, Peter Clifton wrote: Have you ever looked at the GL branch of PCB (my repository here: git clone git://repo.or.cz/geda-pcb/pcjc2.git git checkout -b before_pours origin/before_pours configure with --enable-gl (Build). I get this: configure: error: You don't seem to have the GL library headers installed. You will need them, wherever they come from. I'm not familiar with how you get development headers on OS-X, nor how the X11 / GL stuff integrates on that platform. Oh, I *SO* have development headers and X11 on this machine. ;) I suspect, though, that the GL stuff only comes with more recent releases of OS X. I'm running 10.4 on this system, and will be stuck at that release until I'm convinced that the bugs in 10.5 have actually been fixed. Dave, Peter and I haven't come up with a good way to handle this in a clean autoconf-y way, but if you want to play around with this branch, here's the missing magic: perl -pi -e s,GL/gl.h,OpenGL/gl.h,g;s,GL/glu.h,OpenGL/glu.h,g src/ hid/common/hidgl.c src/hid/gtk/gtkhid-main.c src/hid/gtk/gui.h The configure script just assumes that OS X puts the headers in GL/, but they are part of a framework. You might also have to revert the space navigator commit, too. Hopefully I will have some time to package up this branch, but in the mean time, this will get you closer to compiling. -- Charles Lepple ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA/gaf Mac OSX screenshots?
On Mar 2, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Charles Lepple wrote: Have you ever looked at the GL branch of PCB (my repository here: git clone git://repo.or.cz/geda-pcb/pcjc2.git git checkout -b before_pours origin/before_pours configure with --enable-gl (Build). I get this: configure: error: You don't seem to have the GL library headers installed. You will need them, wherever they come from. I'm not familiar with how you get development headers on OS-X, nor how the X11 / GL stuff integrates on that platform. Oh, I *SO* have development headers and X11 on this machine. ;) I suspect, though, that the GL stuff only comes with more recent releases of OS X. I'm running 10.4 on this system, and will be stuck at that release until I'm convinced that the bugs in 10.5 have actually been fixed. Dave, Peter and I haven't come up with a good way to handle this in a clean autoconf-y way, but if you want to play around with this branch, here's the missing magic: perl -pi -e s,GL/gl.h,OpenGL/gl.h,g;s,GL/glu.h,OpenGL/glu.h,g src/ hid/common/hidgl.c src/hid/gtk/gtkhid-main.c src/hid/gtk/gui.h The configure script just assumes that OS X puts the headers in GL/, but they are part of a framework. You might also have to revert the space navigator commit, too. Hopefully I will have some time to package up this branch, but in the mean time, this will get you closer to compiling. Oh wow, thanks! I'm about to head out on a short road trip, but I should be able to give this a shot this weekend. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
