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From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: PCB design package ?
Message-ID: <22556@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 18 Jun 91 23:21:54 GMT
References: <035643.28501@timbuk.cray.com> <22462@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991Jun17.052843.7744@metapro.DIALix.oz.au>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 39

In article <1991Jun17.052843.7744@metapro.DIALix.oz.au> bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) writes:
>In <22462@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:

>>Anyway, there are two current PCB packages for the Amiga: BoardMaster from
>>BlackBelt (a modern derivitive of PCLO), and Pro-Board from Prolific.  I would
>>really like a combination of their best features, neither is perfect.

>How about posting an article in c.s.a.reviews when you're done
>checking out both packages? The rest of your article is almost 70% of
>a review already!

I actually did write a review of the Pro-Board program for the now-defunct
Amiga Sentry many moons ago.  My conclusion was, if you're paying for simple
boards to be done outside, you can save money starting with the second board
if you do it yourself.  With BoardMaster at $99, you'll save with the first,
but I wouldn't do a very complicated board without a netlist-knowledgable 
program.  It's reasonably simple to write a program that'll extract a netlist
from the BoardMaster database, so it's not like you'd be sending something
out without electronic verification, it's just not as handy as the automatic
method.  Anyway, I'll certainly put up my impressions of BoardMaster when I'm
done, and most likely, some associated support code.

>I know of one Amiga developer who gave up in disgust after battling
>with PCLO for a week. He now uses a PeeCee, because he couldn't find
>the software to run on his Amiga.

I guess it depends on what you want and where you look.  I tried (admittedly 
older versions) of a few popular PC packages, and couldn't find one that ran 
at an even acceptable speed (on a 16MHz '386SX) or was sufficiently bug-free 
to be at all useful.  I didn't get the lastest of any of these, because it
[a] wasn't that big of a deal to have this capability at home, and [b] I'm
not paying big bucks just to try one, but a few people around here had older
OrCADs and Schemas I could loan for a weekend trial.  A $99 program is cheap 
enough to be wrong about, a $999 program isn't.

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
	"This is my mistake.  Let me make it good." -R.E.M.