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PC Electronic Plus
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PC Electronics Plus (Most Significant Bits)(1995).ISO
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pcbcad
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readme
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1992-08-27
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Welcome to pcbcad. This is a freely-copyable software package including
source, executables, and documentation. I include source because I want you
to be able to figure out how these programs work.
This is not in the public domain; software authors who put their work in the
public domain waive all rights to it, including the right to have their
authorship recognized, and the right to make a profit off their work (also,
the right to prevent others from making a profit from it). Authors who release
their work to the public domain do a noble thing, but they also lose all
rights to it.
It is not shareware either, because no donation is solicited or desired.
I reserve the right to be recognized as the author, and to prevent anyone
else from making a profit from it. I have placed a copyright notice in the
source code, which is also displayed when each program is executed. Read the
large block comment at the beginning of PCBROUTE.C for more details on this
copyright.
I will honor all requests for the package if I receive a self-addressed,
stamped floppy mailer and a 360Kb or 1.2Mb floppy disk. some of you are
sending a floppy and postage, but no floppy mailer. If you've done this and
I've supplied a mailer out of my own pocket, please send me the cost of a
floppy mailer ($1), otherwise I may get discouraged with distributing free
software and stop honoring requests that don't include a mailer. As to
postage, it is up to you to figure out how much it will take (I think it's
about 75 cents). If you don't send enough, it will just arrive with postage
due.
The documentation is in the MANUAL file. I consider it to be adequate, but it
will require close reading to effectively use all the programs. One of the
items on my work list is to improve the documentation, both for useability and
for completeness. For a detailed description on the format of the input files
to PCBROUT1, PCBROUT2 and PCBRAT, read the large block comment at the
beginning of IO.C. Also, the EX1.PCB file demonstrates almost all the valid
input syntax.
Included is the text to a magazine article that was published in the September
1989 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. The editors at Dr. Dobb's chose to omit some
of it, and have also changed some of the wording. I prepared a set of artwork,
some of it hand-drawn, for illustrations. Again, some of this was omitted by
the editors. Since the figures are valuable for understanding the article, I
have reproduced them in ascii. You can reproduce that last figure (figure 9)
by autorouting the example circuit, and viewing it with PCBVIEW.
System requirements are a reasonable amount of memory (at least 512k, but 640k
recommended), and an EGA adapter and monitor. Although you could run it on a
floppy-only system, I would not recommend it. It will run on an 8088-based
system, but for this kind of work you really should have more horsepower: a
286 is more realistic, and a fast 386 would be ideal.
I can be reached in the following ways:
Arpanet:
microsoft!randyn@beaver.cs.washington.edu or
microsoft!randyn@uunet.uu.net
Usenet:
..uw-beaver!microsoft!randyn or
..uunet!microsoft!randyn
USPS: Randy Nevin
24135 SE 16th PL
Issaquah, WA 98027, USA
Note - Many users are reporting that PCBVIEW.EXE gives an "out of memory"
error. This is my fault for not making it clear how to use the tools.
PCBROUTE.EXE reads in an ASCII circuit description file (such as EX1.PCB), and
writes out a binary file which describes the routed circuit board (by
convention, these files use the .BRD extension, such as EX1.BRD). PCBRAT.EXE
also works on an ASCII circuit description file, but PCBVIEW.EXE works on a
binary file. If you try to give it an ASCII file, it will say "out of memory".
To route the example circuit and view it, execute these commands:
PCBROUTE EX1.PCB EX1.BRD
PCBVIEW EX1.BRD
The first command produces EX1.BRD from EX1.PCB, and the second one views
EX1.BRD.