6502.org

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I'm going to design a micro ciruit based on the 6502 but i'm not sure what design software to use. I've viewed some of the schematics on this website, but don't know what software to use to produce them.
Any help would be nice.
Thanks

Do you mean P.C. board layout software? There are some inexpensive low-volume prototype board manufacturers that supply the software free, like Express PCB in Santa Barbara, CA (not to be confused with PCBexpres in Oregon). If you're doing just one though, it won't really take you any longer to do it with wire-wrap, and you'll be able to get parts closer together. Wire-wrap is not as tough from a standpoint of accidentally bending the pins if they're not somewhat protected, but if done right, WW is 100% reliable.

Daryl Rictor here on the forum has a nice little 4x5" pre-made board you could use to dramatically shorten the process of getting going with something useful.

Don't worry about doing your schematics with CAD. I haven't found any schematic CAD I'm really happy with, so I still do my schematics by hand, even for our company.

Buy a cheap empty PCB (you can get that from electronics places like RadioShack), draw out the holes on paper, sketch out the connections, and then pen the connections in with the proper tools.

In my opinion, a better idea would be to buy a breadboard and put the components in and wire it. (A warning: don't take too much pride in your work and put the chips in too good, otherwise you will have problems removing them! That actually happened to me when I had a 7400 lodged in the breadboard and it took a large amount of frustration to take it out and replace it with a 74LS00, and I had to get frustrated agian when I discovered I put the 74LS00 on backwards.) When you are 101% sure that you don't need to rewire in the (near) future, draw the circutry on a paper, and have a professional do the rest of making a PCB.

Then I can advise you Eagle 4.15 (www.cadsoft.de). It is freeware (yes, I'm Dutch) and available for Windows and Linux. Lots of my (Commodore) friends use it as well. No 65xx parts included but there are friends for :) Just drop a line and I send you my personal library with a lot of goodies.

Well, as with all things GNU, gEDA's gschem has its warts due to it being an "unfinished" project. However, so far, I'm really quite happy with it. I used it to draw the Kestrel schematics as well as a project for my regular day-job work (let's just call it IB-1048 for now). I even went forward and rendered a PCB for it. Once I get corporate approval, this will also be my first 4-layer PCB design as well, along with my first commercial board production. Lots of firsts.

> Then I can advise you Eagle 4.15 (http://www.cadsoft.de).

When we were shopping for PC-board CAD in the mid-90's, I looked at some schematic CAD too and Eagle was one that seemed really nice IIRC. It wasn't free back then. They guaranteed that it was super stable and absolutely would not crash. Well, the demo itself crashed! Since you say this one is free now though, I might as well take a look.

My first choice for $2K at the time was MAXI-PC, but for a fraction of the price ($375, which was good for our small, struggling company), we ended up getting Easy-PC Pro which I remain very happy with to this day for board lay-out and have used to make extremely dense boards with up to 12 layers and 500 parts on one board. (That biggest board was done in 1993 on a 16MHz '286 running DOS, with 1MB of RAM. It did not need to do any disc-swapping. The HD was 32MB, and I never did fill it up. Compare that to Windoze bloatware!) It has a schematic portion too, but I don't like the way that part works. It's too limiting. The board lay-out software initially had some major bugs, but I and one other fellow here in the U.S. documented them all, and the company (No. 1 Systems in England) was very responsive in fixing them. After that they went on to add simulation, autorouters, and other fancy things, but nothing that was useful for my type of work. I didn't like their newer versions, so I just keep using the old.

At the last place I worked, we bought OrCAD. We looked over a lot of CAD packages on the market, and, unable to figure out without more experience which one would be best, we decided that since OrCAD was out longer than most and was a major CAD player, they probably would have the best functional features and least bugs. Boy were we wrong!!! It had more bugs than an ant hill!! We were constantly calling them up and complaining about the problems, and they were always sending us updates. Sometimes we got updates 2-3 times in one week. But, what can you expect from a company that after all these years still hasn't learned to draw a resistor symbol correctly! Our main CAD operator was ready to throw the computer out the window, and in fact eventually did quit because he said he was angry with the computer all the time.

Hi all,

Free is a relative word here with regard to Eagle.

Limited to 2 signal layers, 1 schematic sheet, 100mmx80mm routing area on a pcb. So, if you're working with small projects, it is great. But if you want final boards >~3.5"x~2.85", you either need to pay for it or find something else.

For small stuff I love it, but I can't afford Eagle in the release version I want. I've also used the software from ExpressPCB (free, but limited on printing capability, geared towards you buying from them, I did my RAMICOM 1.0 4 layer board with their software), PCB123 (free, but also geared to ordering from pcb123), QCad or WinQCad (can't remember the name off hand) decent little program - now offers ability to generate GCode for those doing CNC milling of PCB's (I have an older version of the software), AutoTRAX EDA - not a terrible package but still in the growing stages - author is working on it but still getting some bugs out and the parts library isn't terribly impressive. Almost forgot - Electronics Workbench MultiSIM 7 (I think they have a version 8 out now) - not a terrible product, not quite as intuitive as I would like more geared toward simulation - the ultiboard and ultiroute modules are fairly nice tho - only problem is its expensive, and you really need ultiroute if you want autorouting as the built in rip and route function of ultiboard is rather lame.

Now, with all of that said - I'd love to get that library Ruud - easiest way to reach you thru PM on the site?

-T

Draw it out on a piece of paper. Then buy a blank copper PCB, and trace over your paper drawings on the circiut board with a conductive pen (in the Jameco catalog, PN #263716CJ). Then draw over everything with an overcoat green pen (PN #263732CJ).

Hallo Trancor,
I must admit I forgot to mention that I mainly use it to draw schematics. A friend of mine has a license and can turn some of the bigger ones in real boards if needed. Many of the schematics I draw are only meant for documentation purposes but could easily be used to make real boards. And if I turn a SCH into hardware, I usually do it on the old fashioned way by using wire.

Regarding the library, I'll upload it this evening (if I'll find the time) and you'll find it at www.baltissen.org/files/0ruud.lbr
But I warn you, it is a bit messy: all kind of unsorted things.

Those in a hurry, you can email me at 'Ruud.Baltissen at ABP.nl' and 'Ruud at Baltissen.org'.

I use eagle 4.13 but _c+r+a+c+k+e+d_ to pro version... basic free version is unfortunately too limited and I'm poor so I can't afford any better licence ;(

Get it as long it is still warm :)

Big fan of the Express PCB things in santa barbera. TRhey lowered their price on boards a little bit, so its not bad, 51 bucks for 3 boards. Velly useful

love the schematic program. Sure, its limioted to one size things, but it makes for VERY readable schematics....

I saw this being spammed in the news groups the other day:

http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/

I know nothing of it, but it looks interesting.

(I figure I'll check it out eventually but I haven't gotten to it
yet)