Re: Great Movie Line from an Old Bob Hope Movie

Doesn't that have 2000 have a "CMOS" mode- press PAUSE at startup or something- brings up a table where you specify boot-up drive sequence....

Go into the BIOS setup, by hitting F1 or F2 or DEL while the system is booting (the exact key varies from one manufacturer to the next). In the setup you may find a "boot" page that lets you control boot device order. Just put the internal hard drive ahead of the USB one in the list. If that's not possible, since some BIOSes just let you set the device class order, like HD, Floppy, CD, etc, then see if there is an option to totally disable booting USB devices. My system shows a "USB Boot" option that can be set to "enable" or "disable."

I suspect that Jim is sufficiently sophisticate not to have a computer of this ilk! :-)

Jim, if you fdisk your added drive without setting an active partition, then re-boot it attached to say a Windows XP system, XP will on re-boot automatically ask you if you want it to re-format the drive, or (grunt) do it on it's own. It will normally format it as un-bootable, although there may be a way to override this if you have a reason to do so. I'm not sure how this works on Win2000.

The problem that I ran into with never versions of Windows, was that (just using Win XP as an example) was that Win XP took the existing FAT-16 or FAT-32 on the disk being formatted and accepted it literally without question. This can be problematic when re-using existing hard drives. While there may be other and better solutions, the only way I 'quickly' found to get around it was to boot and old Win98 boot disk in the floppy drive (which contains the fdisk executable) and fdisk the old drive to FAT-32 with new partitions set as desired).

Then (at least with Win XP), it picks up on the presence of the new drive, and formats it (with prompts). To me, this is sort of automation carried to an extreme, but when you consider that Microsoft is simply trying to simplify life for their 'average consumer', it makes at least some sense.

I have only one USB connected drive, and in order to fdisk it, I had to plug the drive into a IDE cable, then reconnect it in it's USB mount prior to booting Win XP. I've never had any boot ambiguity using this method. Then too, you may want to check on your boot sequence in your CMOS setting, to assure that your boot sequence is limited to your #1 (C-drive) possibly followed by your A-drive.

Just for the record, I looked high and low on my Win XP Pro distribution disk an couldn't locate fdisk anywhere on it! Perhaps I missed something, but having the old utility progams still laying around (dating back even to DOS 1.3 and 5.0) have in many recent days saved my ass!

Kindest regards,

Harry C.

that

And even simple Layout editors allow you to grab sides of the cell and stretch them to fit your application if the Foundry allows such. The stretching keeps all layers in alignment if you do it right. So you can make one cell fit different applications.

This place has a demo version of their layout editor with a tutorial that might show you some of the transistor layouts.

Depends on what package you choose. Most of the package suppliers have simple spice models of the ones they offer.

Dean Monthei's book, has quite a few spice models for common package types as well.

Robert

In XP you right click on my computer, and click on manage. Learn the difference between its and it's. If you change the it's to it is, and it doesn't make sense, then the damn apostrophe doesn't belong there.

Hi Jim,

As Carl said, the computer is told where to boot from the BIOS. It shouldn't even have tried from the USB if that wasn't set.

Another area to look is Control Panel -> System -> System Properties -> Advanced. The top entry there needs to point to the desired operating system.

Regards, Joerg

Hello, where can I find some infos about some limits of spice simulation? I need it for a comparision of different simulators.

Any link or comment (especially if you've faced a certain problem) is welcome.

Thanks in advance

Michael

there is also a checkbox for search for other bootable devices in XP so unclick it and make sure you have it set for Floppy as your first boot seek and the CDrom as your second and then the 3rd is your HD that you want it to boot from. if you ever have a problem with windows and have to boot from your recovery disk or your XP cd you will be thankful for the boot order.

Doug

What do you mean by limits?

For example, the main error sources for a simulation are the models. Models are pretty much independent of the simulator, although some simulators have some minor variations on how the handle such models.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

This should also be set from the BIOS. Then you can leave your primary HDD as 1st boot device, until there's a problem, then go into the BIOS and change the settings on the rare occasions when you want to boot from a floppy. Otherwise the system spins up the floppy drive (and the CDROM if there's a disk in it) on every boot, which is a waste of time.

Eh? Are you saying that dies and their packages are made by different suppliers? I'd always assumed the transistor manufacturer also made the packages for its dies, albeit to an industry-wide specification. Who manufactures the packages, then?

Michael,

Maybe you're trying to get at the trade between accurate transistor-level simulation with a global Jacobian as used in SPICE and partitioning solvers and/or gate-level solvers which don't have SPICE accuracy but the capability to simulate orders of magnitude larger designs. You might look at the sales collateral from vendors selling these solvers. I remember seeing one in the Anagram brochure. It was a 2D plot of accuracy vs. circuit size with a regions marked that were viable for various solver methodologies.

--Mike

Here's a few:

In general, simulators never disprove something the models assume.

Spice models usually do not sumulate behavour outside the normal operating conditions of the part. Things like the output side characteristics of an op-amp when Vcc is much below operating would be an example. Thermal issues are generally not included. This can lead to missing real life problems like thermally caused low frequency distortion.

Op-amp models often do not include things like power supply rejection.

Some models, of things like swither chips, assume that the chips ground is connected to the global ground.

Models of noise are usually very simplified views of what really happens.

Simulator software can't really handle much of a mixed digital and analog system. Take a system with a few op-amps, an ADC, a 512 macro cell CPLD, a DC-DC converter, and an 8051 as an example. It is fairly hopeless trying to model the whole thing without making so many simplifying assumptions that your model is mostly a fairy tail.

You might find what you need in some of these. If you care to identify the particular package that you are interested in, it might help.

"Package lead inductance considerations in high-speed applications" Stephen C. Hinkle, Jeffrey A. West Philips AN212 '87

Electrical Performance of Packages Nat Semi AN1205 '01

DE-SERIES FAST POWER MOSFET George J Krausse, Directed Energy, Inc. Doc #9300-0002 Rev 2 '00

DE-Series MOSFET, DEIC420 And SOP-28 IC Device Installation & Mounting Instructions IXYS Doc #9300-0005 Rev 3 '03

"Lumped Skin Effect Model for Package Leads" A.E.Engin IBIS'03

RL

Hi,

Are there any technical reasons why Micro-Cap 8 shouldn't be bought as a direct replacement for PSpice? Most of us are keen to ditch the "industry standard", because, well, we decided today over coffee and buns that we simply don't like it very much. Don't ask why, it's just us. Perhaps we're just looking for new thrills... A few of us have briefly tested the evaluation version of Micro-Cap

Or - even more interestingly - are there any bitter, twisted "Micro-Cap 8 ruined my life!" folk willing to put the boot in? Now's your chance...

Naturally, for the last few years I've personally used the lean, mean LTspice for all my simulations. PSpice makes me tense... Unfortunately, some of the other guys are somewhat sceptical about something you can download for the princely sum of bugger all. No matter how loudly I shout.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing to express sincere thanks to Mike Engelhardt for his mind-boggling work on LTspice. I'm no hardcore Spice expert, but for me it's one of the genuine wonders of the software world. It's ideal for analysing a small circuit with a few op amps etc - very quickly, and remarkably reliably. Treat it with the respect it deserves and it rarely lets you down. If ever. Simply great stuff. And, for what it's worth, I'm a big fan of the interface...

The problem is, after reading so many of Mike's God-like comments on this newsgroup over the years, I'm not entirely sure I trust any other flavour of Spice any more... So, Micro-Cap 8? Is it a nice Spice, deep down?

Cheers.

-P

Any idea why w2k, freshly installed, entered an XP OS in boot.ini and pointed it to partition 3 which was created from unused disk space and formatted prior to installing w2k? It was created and formatted as fat32 with System Commander.

And set the bios settings password if physical security isn't enough. Then no one can boot from floppy or cd and snatch your data which should be on another partition (OS partition gets hosed... data gets hosed.) OS user settings may keep people from messing with your files, but if someone sneaks in and boots another OS... there goes that quintillion dollar idea to run your car off water.

Er... there might be a shunt the thief can use to wipe out the CMOS, so there's always the thing called a case lock. Maybe removing the part of the header where the shunt goes would slow him down.

Encryption? I wouldn't bank on it if the data's *that* valuable.