Design software

[mojo]

What design software do you use? I use Eagle got schematics and PCBs, and Google Sheets for stuff like Comms protocols, pin connections etc.

[Aslak3]

I used to use gEDA but recently switched to KiCAD. I tend to use free and Open Source software for a particular task, if it is "good enough", which KiCAD certainly is. The rest of the software I use is all standard stuff: Makefiles, cross assemblers, terminal software - running on Linux.

[mojo]

Preferred terminal app?

I mostly use Windows and most terminals suck. The old Hyperterminal is one of the better ones. For a recently commercial project I got so fed up I wrote my own.

[jmp(FFFA)]

mojo wrote:

Preferred terminal app?

I've been using Teraterm (http://ttssh2.osdn.jp/) for quite some time now and am generally pleased with it.

[BigEd]

I used to use PuTTY all the time when I used Windows - that, and cygwin's rxvt terminal. The thing to do is to choose a good font and colour scheme for your own particular balance of eyestrain vs density.

[GARTHWILSON]

I have not been happy with any of the schematic capture software I've seen, so I still do my schematics by hand, as you see on my website. I use an old DOS-based CAD for PC boards, Easy PC Professional, from Number One Systems in England, doing extremely dense boards up to 500 parts and 12 layers. It is simple, and doesn't try to second-guess me and say, "You can't do that!", and I am able to easily do a lot of things with it beyond what the software writers had in mind. I have hundreds of special components made up in it, which is a major reason for my reluctance to move to a newer CAD. I would have to re-make all those special switches, inductors, connectors, etc. that don't come pre-made in any standard PCB components package, plus the common ones that I've re-made to get greater density.

I don't use any software for circuit simulation, autorouting, or anything like that. After Number One Systems got the bugs out of my EPCPRO software, they went on to offer these things, but I had no use for them, and it seemed like it was getting harder to use instead of easier, so I'm still using a version from 20 years ago.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

mojo wrote:

Preferred terminal app?

I use a real terminal. Right now I have a relatively old thin client rigged up with its serial port talking to POC. I run the TC in WYSE 60 emulation mode, with the serial port running at 115.2 Kbps. There are a few bugs in the WYSE 60 emulation, but none serious enough to cause any problems.

[mojo]

I've found that most software terminals can't cope with high data rates, especially over USB. Crazy that a 3GHz PC can't keep up with a little 16MHz micro. I keep an eye on eBay for real terminals... Maybe I should build one myself with a fast MCU.

[Klaus2m5]

It is not the PCs problem. Addon PCI cards and mainboard USARTs work quite well. There is still a lot of crappy USB 1.0 converters around. On top USB is half duplex and cannot cope very well with the full duplex RS232 traffic.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

mojo wrote:

I keep an eye on eBay for real terminals... Maybe I should build one myself with a fast MCU.

At least one such animal already exists. This is a VT100 in a chip, with all necessary logic to both drive the display and interface to a PS/2 keyboard. It supports TIA-232 at TTL levels. I obtained one of these µcontrollers with the terminal code loaded, and after POC V2 is up and running (which can't happen until my left eye heals), I will attach it for testing.

[mojo]

I don't think it's just the UART at fault. On Windows at least there is no really fast text box control. The standard one is very slow, far too slow for a terminal. When I wrote my own terminal emulator I used a "dosbox" window which is better but still not perfect.

Hyperterminal has a custom control that is lightning fast. Like mine it an cope with extremely high data rates. Well, except on USB. USB seems to cause problems... I think it is the standard CDC driver which can't cope. The custom FTDI one is okay. Maybe Windows 10 is better, it's supposed to have improved in this area.

My terminal emulator has a few enhancements over VT100, and it would be nice to do those in hardware. A separate display controller will probably be needed to do cope with 4Mb baud rates. I'm thinking dual port RAM.

[Klaus2m5]

yes, misusing a display window as a data buffer is never a good idea.

[mojo]

The problem is that there is no middle ground in Windows. Either you abuse one of the available controls or you write your own from scratch, and it has to do everything manually. Apparently only the Hyperterminal guys could be bothered.

I'm thinking that a Raspberry Pi might be a cheap option for a fast, custom terminal. Is there a real UART on the expansion header?

[Klaus2m5]

The trick is to display only snapshots of the data. A human can't read faster than 300 Baud. There is no reason to put all data up on the window. The last lines filling the window will do. If you need to scroll back, you can always get them from the background buffer.

A raspberry Pi has a USART port as part of the expansion connector both on the 26 (A model) and 40 (B model) pin version.