Re: 8 bit microcontroller market

Hello Yuriy,


OrCad SDT-III 3.22

Inferior to almost any current PCB design package. Very limited capability.

In which ways is it inferior and limited?

In productivity. I.e. how long will it take you to get from idea to the routed PCB. I used it a little about 15 years ago. It was quite good at that time, but PCAD 4.5 happened to have more features and complete support from schematic to PCB and backward. AFAIR, SDT is just a schematic capture. One still had to use a separate PCB routing software.


It is but you could also get a layout package from them. However, it was not used much back then and the layout was done on Autotrax or others. I cannot see a major productivity difference between then and today. For an intricate analog board it still takes about two weeks until first fab is done, like it used to. And we still have the same incompatibilities where the only way to get the data into the layout package is a netlist.

If the EDA industry had buried their tomahawks and agreed on an EDIF standard productivity would be higher. But they didn't.


PCAD2004/PADS/Pulsonix/even Eagle will easily beat this package today.
Even Altium Designer can beat it.


PADS is what my layouter also uses. But he does not do expensive upgrades every time they holler. Neither do I :-)


MS-Works
DOS-Word

Inferior to current MS office set. Or even to OpenOffice.

Sorry, but I don't think so. MS-Works does all my record keeping nicely.

I bet notepad will do all your records even better. :)


Nope. But my chisel does. That's why we know so much about the Romans ;-)


I can work on the files in DOS or a newer Win version, no problems.

Embedded pictures, graphics, excel and visio objects, styles, tables, spell checker, bla-bla-bla.


I could embed schematics, pictures, tables and whatever I wanted into DOS-Word. No problem. Also database lists. Excel probably as well but I am a firm believer in databases so I did not use it much and still don't.


I would still use DOS-Word if it weren't for the fact that I must handle files created by others with Win versions and also because MS has (unfortunately) chosen to not pay much attention to backward compatibility. In Works they did, in Word they didn't :-(

Use notepad and plain ACSII text. Compatibility forever. Best way to keep records is to print them on the plastic. Metal engraving is even better, but a little bit inconvenient...


ASCII is a wonderful standard. Has saved many people's butts when salvaging old docs. But again, for longevity I prefer chisel and granite :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
.

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