12 Dec
2006
12 Dec
'06
8:10 a.m.
On Dec 12, 2006, at 12:24 AM, Richard wrote:
We have the chips produced from earlier eras, but what
attempts have
been made to preserve the design tools from those earlier eras?
Schematic Capture
PCB Layout
Netlist Tools
IC transistor-level design
IC gate-level design
etc.
I know several of you out there have microprocessor development
environments from Intel and TI, IIRC. Ditto for things like PROM
programmers.
What about the design software? I imagine the first generation of EDA
software was created in-house by pioneers of VLSI design. But what
about when the tools started to become commodities? What about early
releases of software from a company like Mentor Graphics?
I've seen two systems (not pure software, but integrated systems)
that really blew me away years ago. My memories of both are very
fuzzy. One was an ECAD workstation called Daisy; it was a schematic
capture system and may have done other things as well. It was
gorgeous but I didn't see much of its capabilities. I saw this
around 1985 or thereabouts.
The other was a PCB layout system made by Calay (or possibly the
model was called Calay, not sure)...It was built into a desk; it had
a small Qbus PDP-11 (11/23 I believe) built into it, which seemed to
be running RT-11 on a text terminal, while the layout was being
developed on a large bitmapped color display. The PCB routing
capability was built around some sort of specialized processor which
the PDP-11 passed data to and from. I gather it was some sort of
hardware-assisted autorouting system. I worked in the facility in
which this machine lived...I wire-wrapped the prototypes of the PCBs
that were designed on that machine, so I didn't get to work with it
directly. This was around mid-1986.
It is a pipe dream, but I have an eBay saved search for "calay"
just in case. :)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL