Dot allowed as characters allowed in netlist?

That's how it should be. Even Eagle misses that at times so the drill is to move all the parts at the end and see if everything rubber-bands along. Other than that it is fairly good though I won't make the transition to the new owner's "license tax model".

That's another error that can happen. Then there is the run of a wire into the wrong net and it got overlooked because the schematic is very busy. When tracing off the netlist in the schematic it's "Hey, wait a minute, why does this connect to the 7th line and not the 8th?".

I now have a brand new set of Miao Ke color pencils, with the colors probably blessed by the comrades from the local party committee.

"Deck" means "punched card deck." Punch cards were a huge improvement over paper tape.

I use 15n and 12u, just like with resistors.

That is a very good strategy and should be done at all companies.

Especially if it goes unobtanium. I just spent 3-1/4 hours to replace one lone part, inluding an online session with Texas to check the layout, just in time for prototype fab submission tonight. To make it extra fun a recent upgrade of LTSpice must have tossed out some symbols so several schematics error all the time. One I found and recreated, the other can't be found because it won't point out the location and everyhting is now there and simulates ok.

I have to put a "not connected" X on pins that aren't used

That's how I learned the first steps in programming. The EE department of our university had only a few punch machines. The IBM's always worked but were always occupied. The Juki's conked out regularly so I always brought a tool kit, made sure no supervisors were around, repaired one and then got first dibs. The out of order sign had "casually fallen" to the floor.

I did learn Fortran and Spice on 029 keypunches. :-)

And it's not only old libraries. There are also spice back ends in circuit and parasitic extractors from chip layout that work for eons and that nobody will want to touch again. Not for an ambiguity that is arbitrarily created.

Often they can't anymore because the guys who created these are in nursing homes or no longer on earth. Sometimes part of the (mental) documentation goes with them into their grave.

I just had my comeuppance regarding "modernization". I recently updated recently and some of my RF sim files no longer worked. Even after re-creating the symbols they axed I get the message "This schematic uses symbols that couldn't be found. Saving it will remove reference to these symbols from the schematic!" and then there isn't anything removed. The message doesn't always show. Something must have been broken.

I had one, some years ago (and I'm using the board again now) where the datasheet for an audio amplifier had pins labeled Vcc+ and Vcc-. So, not thinking, I connected the Vcc+ pins to the most positive rail (+12V) and Vcc- to the most negative rail (ground). Nerp! Vcc+ was fine but the Vcc- pins were the Vcc pins for the "negative" half bridge. They were both supposed to go to the positive rail. Fortunately, the pins were adjacent and it was a QFP part, so the pins could lifted and moved over to the adjacent pins. The netlist didn't help (though it has in the past).

There was usually a note that said something like "all capacitance values in microfarads and all resistance values in k-ohms, unless otherwise noted).

"Should". I agree. However, depending on the schematic capture package...

His point is well taken, though. A nicely formatted netlist can show a lot of errors. It's worth a good look.

Nothing connected to the pin, maybe?

Am 14.03.2018 um 00:29 schrieb Joerg:

Some of us EE students were even officially allowed to operate the TR4 alone, outside the business hours.

So, in a sense, the TR4 was my first personal computer, with card readers, mag tapes, disks, chain printer and a neon lamp for every register bit.

It had 48 bit word size, quite an illumination. :-)

Gerhard

These pins should (have to) be marked as not connected.

I meant, what is ERC?

Except when you drop a box of 4,000 cards:)

electric rule check

Since the cards had line numbers and the card reader had multiple output boxes, it was possible to do a binary sort in a few passes through the reader.

cheers, Gerhard

One better than a DRC.

I wonder how that would work. Say you needed to add a few lines to a subroutine. Does that mean you have to print a whole new deck to renumber all the lines? Or did they increment the line numbers by 10 to allow a few additional cards between the main line numbers?

I used these cards at MIT to program in Fortran, but it was so long ago I forget how they worked.

That was the usual method. However, it doesn't help reorder cards.

I never added sequence numbers. They were more difficult to add manually than they were worth. Mostly, they were used for machine punched decks.