New batch of pdp8 OMNIBUS to USB interface! Please Read and react!

[Jon Elson]

On 02/17/2017 10:21 AM, Kyle Owen wrote:
>
> KiCad has no affiliation to Arduino; in fact, it's being heavily maintained
> by CERN. I don't suppose you've had a need to being an Eagle guy, but have
> you tried out KiCad before? With the licensing model Eagle has just moved
> to, alternatives like KiCad sure seem attractive.
I have a paid license for Protel 99SE, which is a very 
powerful, reliable and intuitive (to me, anyway) package.  
Maybe intuitive because I've been using it so long.  (Too 
long??)

Anyway, a guy gave me a design to manufacture made with 
KiCad, so I installed it.  Well, it certainly is not as 
intuitive to ME as Protel, but maybe I just need to use it 
more.  But, even as of a couple of years ago, it showed a 
LOT of promise!
I'm most concerned about the reliability of the design rules 
check and layout vs. schematic.  If these checks miss 
errors, I REALLY don't want to use the package.  I know 
Protel got it right, in hundreds of board designs, it has 
never once let me down.  Not totally sure KiCad gives that 
level of coverage, so I'm just being cautious.  KiCad is 
open source, so they can't ever pull the plug on users, or 
just go out of business and bury the source code.

But, setting up a virtual machine to run an old Windows 
version just so I can run Protel is a bit of a hassle.  
KiCad runs on Linux quite well (as well as Windows, too.)  I 
think with a couple more years of development, KiCad might 
be as good as Protel.  (KiCad seems to still require picking 
operations from a menu, Protel has user-configurable 
keyboard shortcuts that are a big help.  Maybe KiCad has 
that and I just need to learn them.)

Jon