Re: Board Design

JosephKK wrote:
On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:58:33 -0800, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:23:12 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
Joerg wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:14:54 -0800, "Joel Koltner"
<zapwireDASHgroups@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Joerg,

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:QlJxj.3261$pl4.18@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
But don't you guys use OrCad? I used to, but not anymore.
Yeah, for production stuff we do. I definitely don't *like* that fact, but we're in the (not so uncommon) situation that we have a number of ORCAD licenses that were purchased years ago so switching requires...

1) Outlay of "new purchase price" for the alternative rather than just shelling out maintenance every year
2) Conversion of current library parts over to new system
3) Re-training of engineers & techs to use the new system

ORCAD is spendy enough that #1 isn't too big of a problem, and our libraries still only have hundreds (not thousands) of symbols in them so changeover there isn't too bad (I wouldn't imagine it'd be more than a month's effort), but #3 is difficult to get by some people since they're so used to ORCAD, they don't really see its shortcomings, and they're not personally footing the bill for it. (I think there's often a "bell curve of happiness" associated with mediocre software... new users have problems with everything, regular but undemanding users are happy because they don't stress the tool much so it works OK, whereas advanced/demanding users are unhappy again because they realize that there are so many better options out there).

Sometime this year I'm planning on making a proper (formal) presentation comparing ORCAD with, e.g., Pulsonix. We'll see what happens...

Heck, is Autotrax still around? That used to be pretty good and I bet it won't be expensive anymore.
Autotrax or AutoTRAX? Wikipedia discusses two of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoTRAX_EDA

---Joel

P.S. -- Vaguely related story about software quality: I have a friend who works for a Big Software Company. In general he says that their most sophisticated users and bug reports come from Europe. They had one guy in the U.K. who was constantly filling bug reports with them -- it was almost uncanny how "good" he was at discovering them. At some point it dawned on them that... hey... this would be a very useful guy to hire! They offered, he accepted, and now he's working here in Oregon. It turns out this fellow has been using the software package in question for longer than anyone who's currently on staff at the company (!), and he has an excellent memory, being able to provide in-depth comparisons and contrasts of the package and what's been changed and fixed/broken in it for the past decade. Amazing...

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

I literally buried the PSpice support people in accurate bug
reports/"issues".

They thanked me profusely and did nothing.

Looks like the semiconductor industry is quickly heading in that direction as well. The difference in support between this year and last is mind-boggling. Day and night, with 2008 being the night ... :-(

Call it NXP effect. When it is all about bookkeeping valuation rather than producing and selling useful goods, this is what happens,

I am used to that from European companies. The German part of Philips way back when (Valvo in Hamburg) used to be absolutely excellent in support. Things began to slip a few years after they re-branded all that as Philips. Same with Siemens, excellent support until it becamne Infineon. They blow a lot of money to have their name on stadiums or race tracks or whatever, money they should have been spending on engineering support.

But to see US companies now making the same mistake is sad.
Most of the Stadiums in California have been rebadged with corporate
names.

Yes, but why Infineon? Only engineers will recognize that name. They really should have spent that money on customer service.

But it is a cool sounding name and could attract "investors".


Yeah, like the guy up there in the 7th row, with the beer, who's got about $15k of credit card debt ...

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
.

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