gEDA suite vs my creaky old Protel Client 3.5?

[Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott]

Other than dealing with the hourly crash and an autorouter that does an
absolutely miserable job, I've grown accustomed to my creaky old Client.
I have a huge library of schematic and pcb parts, so there is an
investment. Upgrading to a newer Protel seems to be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 10K USD, money better spend on my kids' education, so
that's out.

I'm curious to know how the gEDA suite stacks up against what I'm using.
Two-sided boards with surface-mount and through-hole, no integration
with simulation needed. Hierarchal schematics. Detailed BOMs. Get me
elected Queen of the May if I wish. Just basic stuff.
--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

 

[Stuart Brorson]

: I'm curious to know how the gEDA suite stacks up against what I'm using.
: Two-sided boards with surface-mount and through-hole, no integration
: with simulation needed. Hierarchal schematics. Detailed BOMs. Get me
: elected Queen of the May if I wish. Just basic stuff.

It depends upon what you want to do. For basic designing of two layer
boards, gEDA works quite well. Four is also doable. PCB tops out at
6 layers, so it's not meant for large or complex projects. It has
most features of low-end commercial EDA packages, without being
crippled or limited to arbitrarily small designs (like freeware
Eagle). OTOH, it does lack a couple of features present in commercial
tools.

I use gEDA to bang out quick-'n-dirty test boards at work. Here's a 2
layer sensor interface board.

http://www.brorson.com/MVC-727S_anonymous.JPG

It's nothing exciting, but you can see gEDA/PCB is able to handle all
types of components (SMT and through-hole).

I also have done private projects using the gEDA Suite. No photos
now, however. Sorry!

Here's the current gEDA project of the month: a binary clock.

http://www.pencilfarm.org/bclock.html

The guy doing this project also has some words of advice for those
thinking about using gEDA; give his site a read.

You will need to invest a little time in re-drawing your
symbols & redoing your footprint libarary, but many of this already
comes with the gEDA Suite. You don't get as many canned symbols and
footprints as with commercial EDA packages, but most real users
generate their own symbols and footprints anyway.

Through hole & SMT stuff is a cinch. Hierarchy does work, but
hierarchical bus support is still lacking. Therefore, if you
absolutely need hierarchical busses, look elsewhere -- or join us in
hacking/improving gEDA!

As for BOMs and attribute management, I like to think that between the
various BOM backends for gnetlist and using gattrib (the attribute
manager) you will be very content.

A missing piece is backannotation from PCB to gschem. Therefore, if
you make changes to your connectivity in PCB (e.g. gate swapping), you
will need to manually update your schematic.

Why not download the CD and try it out? The download is free, and the
CD makes installation easy -- if you have a Linux box.

Finally, I'd bet that if you post your question on the gEDA-user list,
you'd get more reactions and photos from people using the suite. The
mailing lists are here:

http://www.geda.seul.org/mailinglist/index.html

Stuart

 

[DJ Delorie]

PCB tops out at 6 layers,

8 layers, or 6 plus two power planes, although if you want a complex
outline you use one of the layers for that.

My recent flag changes "open the door" to supporting up to 32 copper
layers with a trivial change, or more with a slightly bigger change.

OTOH, it does lack a couple of features present in commercial tools.
Like?

It's nothing exciting, but you can see gEDA/PCB is able to handle all
types of components (SMT and through-hole).

Here's my project: http://www.delorie.com/house/furnace/

 

[Ingo Cyliax]

Other than dealing with the hourly crash and an autorouter that does an
absolutely miserable job, I've grown accustomed to my creaky old Client.
I have a huge library of schematic and pcb parts, so there is an
investment. Upgrading to a newer Protel seems to be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 10K USD, money better spend on my kids' education, so
that's out.

I'm curious to know how the gEDA suite stacks up against what I'm using.
Two-sided boards with surface-mount and through-hole, no integration
with simulation needed. Hierarchal schematics. Detailed BOMs. Get me
elected Queen of the May if I wish. Just basic stuff.

I have designed many PCB based boards (2-6 layers) over the years(10 or
so). The current versions of PCB has grown to be a very useful and
powerful layout tool. It has useful features and most of them work
well. When there is a problem, I can usually dig into the PCB files
(since they are ASCII) and either fix it by hand or at least understand
what's wrong. I have also fixed some problems in earlier version of
PCB. Having sources was a lifesaver on at least one project.

The learning curve of PCB is pretty steep, since the documentation is a
bit dated. Often I would have to go to the source to figrue out new
features. Generating adhoc footprints is easy unside PCB, since you can
group copper/silk and then convert then into a component footprint.
Never mastered using M4 to parametrically generate footprints, but I
have written some of my own tools (Tcl and C) to generate footprints,
easy since the files are in ASCII.

I have recently (last year or so), started using gEDA has my primary
CAD toolchains. Before gEDA, I would use OrCad under windows to create
schematics/netlist and then convert the netlists to PCB. Kind of a
hassle, since OrCad didn't run well under Wine and I never bothered to
compile PCB under Cygwin.

It took me a little while to figure out how to generate symbols under
gschem, and it's still a little cumbersome. However, as I'm learning
more features all this becomes easier and faster. gschem is definately
more robust than many Windows based CAD tools I have used in the past.
I can't count how often OrCad, P-Cad, etc. have hung under Windows, or
learned sequence of commands you can't do without chance of crashing.
Also, being able to look at and edit the ASCII files is a bonus !

So far I have done 3 double sided boards within gEDA and had no serious
problems getting them done. Also, there were no mysterious netlist
errors, which I always battled with when trying to export netlist from
commercial tools (e.g. OrCad). One of the boards was a prototype for a
USB programming dongle board ar work, which had a 32pin QFP, a few
connectors and a handfull of SMT parts (0805, SOT-223, SOT-23, SizeA
Cap, 2mm and 50mil dual row headers). Only the SMT dual row header
require my own custom footprints in PCB. In gschem, I had to make a
symbol for a FT232BM, I think that was it.

Features I have not used, are buses in gschem and it's Spice
interface. Also, I have not made extensive use of gattrib and the
various netlist exporters to generate BOMs, etc... I have not used
the auto place function in PCB. And I'm still baffled at the symantics
of how gsch2pcb generates the inital layout file, as well as new
versions of it; I somehow think orthogonal to it..., at least I'm
able to get netlists into PCB reliably.

Finally, I'm just ecstatic that I can run my whole tool chain under
Linux now. Also, I find it useful that I can share my designs with
almost anyone, since they can run the same tools I'm, as supposed to
negotiating what CAD format we use. I did like Eagle, but the file
format is closed and you end up having to spend $ to get a useful
version, anyway. I would probably like Eagle more and be willing to pay
for a full version, if the file format was open. On the other hand, I'm
very happy with gEDA, for now.

It's probably easiest to get started pick a non-critical and simple
board, grab some of the tutorials on gEDA and dive into it and ask
questions or google when you get stuck.

Later, -ingo

 

[Stuart Brorson]

Hi DJ --



:> PCB tops out at 6 layers,

: 8 layers, or 6 plus two power planes, although if you want a complex
: outline you use one of the layers for that.

How do you get 8? Do you have to redefine the layer buttons on
the left? If so, how do you do that?

: My recent flag changes "open the door" to supporting up to 32 copper
: layers with a trivial change, or more with a slightly bigger change.

Awesome! Thank you!

Note to the OP: A new, GTK-based version of PCB is slated to be
released any day now, so some of the usability issues which others
have mentioned will be reduced.

:> OTOH, it does lack a couple of features present in commercial tools.

: Like?

The biggies are: 1. no hierarchical busses in gschem, and 2. no
easy backannotation between PCB and gschem.

Last year somebody submitted patches which implemented hierarichal
busses. However, the code was apparently incomplete & buggy, and
never made it into the main development branch.

As for PCB -> gschem backannotation, we have discussed this in some of
our Free EDA meetings, and I have an idea of how to implement this in
the gEDA/gaf file format. The project just awaits a developer with
time to tackle the job. (I don't right now.)

There are also some little issues, like gattrib doesn't print, and
won't handle net or pin attribs yet. Missing features in gattrib are
my fault. Also, the project manager "geda" is still buggy. As far as
I can tell, most power users bypass the project manager and run the
tools individually from the command line. The project manager doesn't
seem to be actively supported right now; it's stuck using GTK-1.2.

In conclusion, lots of folks use gEDA/PCB for real work. It works
fine for small-to-mid-sized projects. It has several features which
make it better than comparable commercial tools, e.g. Linux based
flow, less buggy than Protel, all ASCII file formats, rapid bugfixes,
not crippled, etc. However, it isn't perfect (although it's close!),
and lacks a couple of features (hierarchical busses & backanno). If
you absolutely need those features, gEDA isn't ready for you --
please check back later. But if your boards are simple enough that you
don't need these power features, then check out the gEDA Suite -- it's
available for free download, so you can always try it and make your
own decision!

http://www.geda.seul.org/download.html

Stuart

 

[DJ Delorie]

: 8 layers, or 6 plus two power planes, although if you want a complex
: outline you use one of the layers for that.

How do you get 8? Do you have to redefine the layer buttons on
the left? If so, how do you do that?

In the default pcb-gtk settings, you've got component, solder, gnd,
power, signal1, signal2, unused, unused. Eight. You can rename them
or group them, but as far as the internal are concerned, they're just
eight copper layers.

The Xaw version of pcb used to default to grouping some of the layers
together to form logical layers, reducing the number of gerber plots,
but you could always break the groupings to get back to eight
individual layers. It's always been that way.

Note to the OP: A new, GTK-based version of PCB is slated to be
released any day now,

Too late ;-)

Although I don't know if there's a snapshot of it yet, but it is what
you get if you check it out of CVS. The Xaw version has been
relegated to a branch.

2. no easy backannotation between PCB and gschem.

Yeah, we talked about that a bit. I suspect the hard parts are
agreeing on a file format and redrawing the schematics if needed.
Spitting out the difference between the netlist and the current
connectivity shouldn't be *that* hard for pcb to do.

 

[Dave Boland]

In the default pcb-gtk settings, you've got component, solder, gnd,
power, signal1, signal2, unused, unused. Eight. You can rename them
or group them, but as far as the internal are concerned, they're just
eight copper layers.

The Xaw version of pcb used to default to grouping some of the layers
together to form logical layers, reducing the number of gerber plots,
but you could always break the groupings to get back to eight
individual layers. It's always been that way.




Too late ;-)

Although I don't know if there's a snapshot of it yet, but it is what
you get if you check it out of CVS. The Xaw version has been
relegated to a branch.




Yeah, we talked about that a bit. I suspect the hard parts are
agreeing on a file format and redrawing the schematics if needed.
Spitting out the difference between the netlist and the current
connectivity shouldn't be *that* hard for pcb to do.

There was an article about gEDA in Circuit Cellar, March
issue. I read it because I was considering using it and
wanted to reduce the learning curve (never enough time and
no one will pay me to learn something). I likely won't be
using it now, but I'd like to share my thoughts (sent to the
article authors) and all of you can comment as you see fit.

1. The article was a nice introduction, but not enough
detail for me to feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope
they will do a series of articles on using all of the gEDA
facilities, which are impressive.

2. What would be nice is a book similar to "Build Your Own
Printed Circuit Board" (by Al Williams), which uses Eagle.
This is a very good hand-holder, but not a great reference
text. Still, it serves the purpose of getting people
started with Eagle. I'm using Eagle because a free version
came with the book. The problem is that who has the time to
write a book!?! Doing a book is really a project in its
self. An example of a good e-book (on Knoppix) is at:
http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/knowing-knoppix/index.html

3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a
livecd with the complete gEDA system on it. This is another
bit of work, but I seem to use livecd's more than I ever
thought I would, and it would serve as a bridge to Windows
users.

Have a good day.

Dave,

 

[Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott]

There was an article about gEDA in Circuit Cellar, March issue. I read
it because I was considering using it and wanted to reduce the learning
curve (never enough time and no one will pay me to learn something). I
likely won't be using it now, but I'd like to share my thoughts (sent to
the article authors) and all of you can comment as you see fit.

1. The article was a nice introduction, but not enough detail for me to
feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope they will do a series of
articles on using all of the gEDA facilities, which are impressive.

2. What would be nice is a book similar to "Build Your Own Printed
Circuit Board" (by Al Williams), which uses Eagle. This is a very good
hand-holder, but not a great reference text. Still, it serves the
purpose of getting people started with Eagle. I'm using Eagle because a
free version came with the book. The problem is that who has the time
to write a book!?! Doing a book is really a project in its self. An
example of a good e-book (on Knoppix) is at:
http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/knowing-knoppix/index.html

3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a livecd with the
complete gEDA system on it. This is another bit of work, but I seem to
use livecd's more than I ever thought I would, and it would serve as a
bridge to Windows users.

Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity
about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know
that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I
have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd
is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to
make a few.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

 

[Bernhard Krämer]

Hello,

your discussion about gEDA is very interesting. For the moment, I have a
high-school project where I also have to design a circuit of middle size
(in the order of 15 Opamps, 40 resistors and a lot of capacitors, but also
some switches, flipflops and mosfets. In spite of the huge number of parts,
it's not very complicated).

A few years ago, I used Eagle. Unfortunately, Eagle is not an option here
because the lab I currently work in doesn't own a full version of it. So,
for a first prototype, I used Protel DXP. And IMHO, I never used such an
ugly program before! It is the absolutely contrary to "user-friendly" --
for giving an example, I needed more than half a day of desesperate
searching involving half the lab to find out how to print in the /correct/
scale, and that in spite of the manual under my hands.

You can imagine that I would prefer not to use it for the next prototype of
my circuit. On the other hand, I do not really have much time these days.

So, what do you think: Is it worth to learn gEDA and to redraw some symbols
that might not be available, or should I use Protel DXP, having all parts I
need and only loosing time in some trap that Protel DXP might devise? Which
choice would save more time ?

There was an article about gEDA in Circuit Cellar, March issue. I read it

because I was considering using it and wanted to reduce the learning curve
(never enough time and no one will pay me to learn something). I likely
won't be using it now, but I'd like to share my thoughts (sent to the
article authors) and all of you can comment as you see fit.

1. The article was a nice introduction, but not enough detail for me to

feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope they will do a series of
articles on using all of the gEDA facilities, which are impressive.

Are they available on the internet?

2. What would be nice is a book similar to "Build Your Own Printed Circuit

Board" (by Al Williams), which uses Eagle. This is a very good hand-holder,
but not a great reference text. Still, it serves the purpose of getting
people started with Eagle. I'm using Eagle because a free version came with
the book. The problem is that who has the time to write a book!?! Doing a
book is really a project in its self. An example of a good e-book (on
Knoppix) is at:

http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/knowing-knoppix/index.html

Perhaps it could be an idea that interested gEDA uses and programmers create
a wikibook, see : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
These are books where everybody can contribute.

Yours,

Bernhard

 

[DJ Delorie]

feel comfortable doing a project yet. Hope they will do a series of
articles on using all of the gEDA facilities, which are impressive.

Are they available on the internet?

If you get an electronic subscription to CC, you can (at the moment,
hurry) download the March 2005 issue, which had the gEDA article.
Otherwise, eventually you'll probably be able to buy it as a
back-issue.

 

[Stuart Brorson]

: So, what do you think: Is it worth to learn gEDA and to redraw some symbols
: that might not be available, or should I use Protel DXP, having all parts I
: need and only loosing time in some trap that Protel DXP might devise? Which
: choice would save more time ?

I suggest you download gEDA and try it [1]. Drawing the symbols
doesn't take that long. Many symbols already exist, and if they don't
then just take a similar symbol and modify it & save it out.

As for layout footprints, John Luciani has posted a whole bunch of
symbols on his website:

http://www.luciani.org/geda/pcb/pcb-footprint-list.html

Here's a quick tutorial which guides you through the whole process of
doing a design using gEDA/PCB:

http://www.geda.seul.org/docs/current/tutorials/gsch2pcb/tutorial.html

Finally, don't hesitate to install using the gEDA Suite CD
distribution. It gives you all the tools (gEDA/gaf, PCB, circuit
simulators, Verilog, etc.) bundled together with an automated
installer. Get it at:

http://www.geda.seul.org/download.html

Stuart

[1] Of course, I am biassed.

 

[Chuck Harris]

Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity
about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know
that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I
have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd
is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to
make a few.

How do you know that gEDA doesn't run under Window sex pea?

With Cygwin it runs nicely... (or, so I am told. I don't use microsloth
products.)

-Chuck

 

[Stuart Brorson]

: Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott wrote:

:>> 3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a livecd with
:>> the complete gEDA system on it. This is another bit of work, but I
:>> seem to use livecd's more than I ever thought I would, and it would
:>> serve as a bridge to Windows users.
:>
:>
:> Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity
:> about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know
:> that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I
:> have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd
:> is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to
:> make a few.

: How do you know that gEDA doesn't run under Window sex pea?

The last version of gschem compiled to run on Windoze is from 2002.
It is quite old. Other tools in gEDA/gaf (e.g. gattrib) won't compile
for Windoze at all. (Maybe on Cygwin? I haven't tried. . . . .)

PCB runs under Cygwin I have been told. Again, I haven't tried.

In my vision, gEDA is another reason to break free from the Windoze
stranglehold and make a move to the Penguin. If you're an engineer
smart enough to design boards, you're more than smart enough to use
and appreciate the power of unix. Why stick with an OS which places
limits on your own ability to get stuff done? Why use an environment
which doesn't seamlessly integrate power tools like Perl, Python,
make, CVS, etc. etc. etc??? The beauty of gEDA's ASCII file formats
is that you can easily use the above mentioned tools as part of
your hardware design flow. Can you do that with Protel or Orcad [1]?

Stuart

[1] Don't tell me about exporting ASCII from Protel -- I've tried it
and it is broken. Also, the ASCII format is not the native format, so
integration with other tools is far from seamless.

 

[JeffM]

whatever the heck a livecd is,

it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA
Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott

A live CD is bootable.
(You don't have to install the OS on your HDD.)

Usually thought of in terms of Linux (Knoppix is at v3.8),
there are also some Windoze live CDs:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284714
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284679
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284795


The reference in this thread is to a task-specific live CD.
There are such critters here (security, multimedia, games),
mixed in with the general-purpose variants:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

To make a CD that boots Linux and opens gEDA
is the Holy Grail to many long-suffering Windoze users
(a bridge between a broken OS and a UNIX-like environment).
It does not currently exist.
As Stuart points out (regarding other areas of the project),
it will take talented people willing to donate their time.

gEDA...I know that it doesn't run under WinXP

Stuart's .ISO is a distribution for the gEDA suite (no OS).
The binaries and installer are for Linux.
In theory, you can build a Windoze version of gEDA
using the source code
(which is available for any such "Open Source" software).
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cygwin-is+from-source

As Stuart says, the last Windoze build is terribly out of date.

 

[Chuck Harris]

Stuart's .ISO is a distribution for the gEDA suite (no OS).
The binaries and installer are for Linux.
In theory, you can build a Windoze version of gEDA
using the source code
(which is available for any such "Open Source" software).
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cygwin-is+from-source

As Stuart says, the last Windoze build is terribly out of date.

That's exactly what cygwin is for, isn't it? As I understand things,
cygwin is to linux as wine is to windows.

-Chuck

 

[Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott]

: Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott wrote:

:>> 3. May as well go whole hog (so to speak) and then do a livecd with
:>> the complete gEDA system on it. This is another bit of work, but I
:>> seem to use livecd's more than I ever thought I would, and it would
:>> serve as a bridge to Windows users.
:>
:>
:> Hi -- OP here. I am a Windows user, so aside from the original curiosity
:> about what gEDA has to offer to me vis a vis Protel Client 3.5, I know
:> that it doesn't run under WinXP, but that is not a s.e.cad matter so I
:> have set that little hurdle aside. So . . . whatever the heck a livecd
:> is, it sounds like it might let me eval gEDA. Count me in if you want to
:> make a few.

: How do you know that gEDA doesn't run under Window sex pea?

The last version of gschem compiled to run on Windoze is from 2002.
It is quite old. Other tools in gEDA/gaf (e.g. gattrib) won't compile
for Windoze at all. (Maybe on Cygwin? I haven't tried. . . . .)

PCB runs under Cygwin I have been told. Again, I haven't tried.

In my vision, gEDA is another reason to break free from the Windoze
stranglehold and make a move to the Penguin. If you're an engineer
smart enough to design boards, you're more than smart enough to use
and appreciate the power of unix. Why stick with an OS which places
limits on your own ability to get stuff done?

Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, UPS Worldship, Quickbooks, Quicken
.. . . those are my major reasons to stick with WinXP. I'm a one-man
show, not just an engineer.

 

[JeffM]

In theory, you can build a Windoze version of gEDA

That's exactly what cygwin is for, isn't it?
As I understand things, cygwin is to linux as wine is to windows.
Chuck Harris

For the click-impaired:
Had you clicked the provided link, you would have seen
**Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows.
You have to rebuild your application from source
if you want to get it running on Windows.**

Had you clicked the 1st item at Google, you would have also seen
**Cygwin is not a way
to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX functionality,
like signals, ptys, etc.
Again, you need to build your apps from source
if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.**

So, to recap:
Cygwin is a compiling tool
to build Windows programs from source code.

wine is a reverse-engineered set of Windows APIs
which run under Linux, callable at runtime.

Aside from providing cross-platform possibilities,
they are quite different.
Getting non-M$ stuff to run in a M$ environment
is more difficult than the inverse.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

In my vision, gEDA is another reason to break free from the Windoze
stranglehold and make a move to the Penguin. If you're an engineer
smart enough to design boards, you're more than smart enough to use
and appreciate the power of unix. Why stick with an OS which places
limits on your own ability to get stuff done?

Because good engineers find ways to get stuff down with pretty much any
contemporary operating system? I think both Windows and Linux are decent
operating systems. A couple of years ago when I last looked at Linux, my two
biggest annoyances were that program installation was not standardized between
distributions and GUIs and that standard keyboard commands such as
cut/copy/paste were also not standardized (e.g., some programs used Ctrl+X for
cut, some used Alt+X! -- and I know you can pretty much always change these,
but I shouldn't have to spend my time doing that when I'm trying to get REAL
WORK done).

I imagine Linux has improved in these respects over the past few years,
though; it general it's been improving slowly but surely. (A couple of years
ago there, they'd just gotten to the point of doing automatic new hardware
detection/driver installatoin at boot time, which was a nice improvement over
completely manual installations, even though they hadn't yet gotten to the
point of supporting true "plug and play" for things like USB key drives --
which I'm told is there now.)

Why use an environment
which doesn't seamlessly integrate power tools like Perl, Python,
make, CVS, etc. etc. etc???

Windows tends to "seamlessly" integrate power tools like Visual Source Safe,
VBA, etc. Yes, it is (often) locking you to the Evil Microsoft Empire, but
hey, again -- it gets the job done.

The beauty of gEDA's ASCII file formats
is that you can easily use the above mentioned tools as part of
your hardware design flow. Can you do that with Protel or Orcad [1]?

I don't know about Protel or OrCAD, but many Windows PCB/schematic packages
have the option to save files either as ASCII or binary -- the later being
fast and using less disk space, of course.

The big push now seems to be to get everyone to save their files in XML
format -- can gEDA do that? Without at least a little structure to a file
format such as that imposed by XML, about the only major benefit I can see in
arbtirary ASCII formats is that the 'diffs' work a lot better in version
control systems.

---Joel Kolstad

 

[Mike Rocket J. Squirrel Elliott]

A live CD is bootable.
(You don't have to install the OS on your HDD.)

Usually thought of in terms of Linux (Knoppix is at v3.8),
there are also some Windoze live CDs:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284714
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284679
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/15/0251249&mode=nested&threshold=5#8284795


The reference in this thread is to a task-specific live CD.
There are such critters here (security, multimedia, games),
mixed in with the general-purpose variants:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

To make a CD that boots Linux and opens gEDA
is the Holy Grail to many long-suffering Windoze users
(a bridge between a broken OS and a UNIX-like environment).
It does not currently exist.
As Stuart points out (regarding other areas of the project),
it will take talented people willing to donate their time.




Stuart's .ISO is a distribution for the gEDA suite (no OS).
The binaries and installer are for Linux.
In theory, you can build a Windoze version of gEDA
using the source code
(which is available for any such "Open Source" software).
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cygwin-is+from-source

As Stuart says, the last Windoze build is terribly out of date.

I'm sorry to hear that the gEDA suite is presently not an option for
WinXP users. Oh well, looks like me old Protel Client 3.5 is here to
stay, at least for a while.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: "Mellow Yellow (The Electrical Banana)"
KG6RCR

 

[Tom Loredo]

Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, UPS Worldship, Quickbooks,
Quicken . . . those are my major reasons to stick with WinXP. I'm a >
one-man show, not just an engineer.

Well, you can use all those under Mac OS X, *and* gEDA (I just
compiled the latest gEDA myself on OS X over the weekend, to give
it my first try---it was not painless, but neither was it horrible;
for OS X nerds, this was without Fink). I use all three major
platforms all the time (Linux, OS X, WinXP, in order of the amount
of time I spend on each). OS X is my definite favorite---the
niceties of a commercial OS, with the flexibility and power of Unix.
WinXP lags way behind the other two. However, I have to keep
it around, not for the non-engineering stuff you mentioned, but
for running software for demo and development boards from chip
manufacturers, and test eqpt. software. Until *those* folks come
around to *nix or OS X, I think WinXP and Win-centric EDA tools
are here to stay. Sadly!

-Tom