VAX-11/7xx Electronic CAD Software?

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote: When I began with my current company in 1989, I was doing PCB layout and schematic capture for MIL qualified avionics. For schematic capture, we had a trio of Valid Scaldstation minis that served several green screen graphics terminals each. Each terminal was a ~19" tube attached to a dedicated table with a built in digitizer. The SCALD software allowed the engineers to run circuit simulations and the draftsman to generate releasable drawings and generate a netlist to send to board layout. For the board layout we used the Scicards software on a 11/780 running VMS. Like the Valid machines, the Scicards had its own dedicated graphics terminal with integrated digitizer. The main difference was that the Scicards terminal was color and we only had a single seat. As far as usability goes, the Valid machines were very nice to use and were relatively easy to get the desired results with. On the other hand, the Scicards software is memorable for how annoying it was to use. I vividly recall creating long lists of guessed X-Y coordinate moves to try to get the text and symbols to be where you wanted them, only to see them land in the wrong spot. Repeat. By the way, all of the equipment mentioned was transferred into the collector community when we moved back in 2002. I don't recall who has them, but there are (were?) Scicards and Valid terminals out there. -Jon