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From: andrey@tybalt.caltech.edu (Andre T. Yew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: LogicWorks 2.0
Summary: Don't use LogicWorks on the Mac
Keywords: Logic, Digital, Design
Message-ID: <1990Mar25.174702.27709@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu>
Date: 25 Mar 90 17:47:02 GMT
References: <1990Mar25.071227.19699@csuchico.edu>
Sender: news@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 60

In article <1990Mar25.071227.19699@csuchico.edu> murphyd@csuchico.edu (Dave Murphy) writes:
>Has anybody out there used LogicWorks 2.0?  I need to use a digital
>design program for a CSCI-280 Digital Design.  I have seen LogicWorks
>2.0 on the Mac and it is a VERY powerful program.  I lets you build
>your own macros and connect them up to MacPaint pictures.
>
>I would like to know what features the Amiga version has, and if 
>it is fully compatible with the Mac version.
>
>Thanx in advance!
>         ____________________________________________________________
>        ///           __  __  __  __   |                           \\\
>       ///  /\        __||  ||  ||  |  |  David L. Murphy           \\\
>  \\\ ///  /--\miga  |__ |__||__||__|  |  murphyd@csuchico.edu       \\\ ///
>   \\\//                               |  murphyd@cscihp.UUCP         \\///


	I've used LogicWorks 2.0 before on all forms of Macintosh computers. 
And all I can say about it is that it is not very stable.  It has a lot of
really neat features, but they all don't work.  For example, in a CS class
here, we had to build a calculator in LogicWorks, and I would say that more
than 50% of the time we spent on it was spent on working around LogicWorks.
For example, LogicWorks, many times, would tell us that an internal error
had occurred, and that you should save your file as soon as possible, before
the program corrects the mistake.  We complied, and LogicWorks corrected the
error, which somehow always involved moving various parts of the circuit
on to the edge of the page.  Well, since we had saved our work, we reloaded
and found out that the internal error occurred exactly after we reloaded our
circuit.  Since we had several hundred devices, we really didn't feel like
rebuilding our circuit, so we just replaced the parts on the circuit that were
moved.  Even then LogicWorks still crashed.  And even when there were no
errors mentioned by the program, LogicWorks still crashes.  In fact, in a 
three-hour session of working on our calculator, we can expect at least
5 crashes that would force us to reboot.  Ten crashes was not uncommon.  Soon
we became convinced of one of three things:

	1) LogicWorks maliciously crashes just to raise the stress level
	   of its users.
	2) The programmers of LogicWorks are incompetant.
	3) It is impossible to program stable applications on the Macintosh.

	For those people who like to trade favorite LogicWorks tricks, here
are mine:  saying LogicWorks has unexpextedly quit when we tell it to quit,
placing a part on the screen only to have LogicWorks remove another, and
having in Multifinder both Device Librarian up with a SuperPaint picture, and
LogicWorks with our calculator up at the same time, but having D.L. saying
we're short on memory when running only Finder, and we're trying to link
our picture to our calculator.
	LogicWorks has a lot of potential, but it sucks.  Avoid it like the
plague.  It is useful only when simulating 3 or 4 gates.  If the definition
of a program that sells the computer is "Amiga Demo", then LogicWorks is the
anti-demo of the Mac world.
	(By the way, for nitpickers, we did get LogicWorks 2.0.2, but it
can still perform the same tricks as 2.0 -- it crashes randomly, and we were
in one-step mode when we changed our circuit around.  I have used LogicWorks
on the Mac+ and the Mac IIci.  The ci was the machine we used most often,
and had 5 MB of memory with an 80 MB hard drive, so memory considerations
seemed to have been fulfilled.)

      							- Andre