I hope this is a heartening economic sign...

capacity.

delays

amount of

=A0Although some

five

those that

have

industry is

HV

Certainly. Anyone with half a brain knows the foolishness of mixed analog/digital on a single-voltage-choice process.

If CDxxxx proves to be viable, it'll still be made. But don't come crying when someone else follows ON's lead and shuts down a low volume line also.

That may well be ALL the CD4060 in the world :-)

Better performance at half the price on one of those mixed process technologies I mentioned. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
      The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

[...]

For some reason I've never seen a problem with that. I sure hope not but if you do get really sick you may have devices used on yourself that contain those. Designed by yours truly.

That's what I am saying, it is viable. You can use unregulated supplies, do analog stuff with them, hang'em directly onto a 12V rail. In many apps there just isn't any alternative.

Nope, Arrow and others have more. Lots more. But this is a cut-throat market, maybe ON had to throw in the towel? That's what happened with, for example, intravascular ultrasound. One day HP shut the whole chebang down, cost lots of jobs. But that wasn't because the market had shriveled up, it was because folks like us were eating their lunch. In fact I met a guy from HP a week ago when picking up some cases at our local winery. "So that was you guys who dunnit?" ... I apologized for having done them in ;-)

I am talking 10-15c a pop here. At our volume and Asia pricing well under 10c. Cents ;-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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I'm really puzzled by your use of CDxxxx in _new_ designs???

If you're just patching old stuff... OK. But _new_ stuff?

You're like Larkin, get stuck in an untenable position, then get obstinate ;-)

Enjoy! But watch out. I've seen other stuff than CDxxxx continue on a line that was not maintained, just let 'er run. Then parts start dying and you can't get a replacement source. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
      The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

You'd be surprised how many other recent designs contain them. One of the things I regularly do is open consumer goods to see what's in there. That's a pretty good indicator of what will stick in the marketplace. Very good learning experience, also for packaging.

You think it's untenable. I don't :-)

Anyhow, the guy from Fairchild was clearly wrong, 100%. And you may be, too, with your assertion that CD-logic is dead. BTW the sales rep back in the 90's was not the only engineer predicting the imminent demise of CD-logic. That was about 15 years ago ...

Let's see. There is: Fairchild, TI, NXP, Thomson, Rohm, Toshiba. Do you honestly believe a Japanese company lets anything run non-maintained?

Yeah, some may quit along the way because profits aren't great. But distributors would not stock tens of thousands of chips if the technology was turning into a dud. Most certainly not in this economy.

--
Regards, Joerg

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ome

If that were the case, my wife's company would not be busier now than it was in 2005. Their market is a leading one because they sell and service the sort of stuff you need to get a line working.

The packaging business will lag because the chips have to be made before they are packaged.

My industry is normally a lagging one. This recovery is somewhat unusual. I suspect that this is largely an effect of the stimulus being applied to the building of infrastructure. Normally spending on infrastructure lags.

HV=20

=20

=20

24=20

TI has its own spice variant and a host of tools, too bad they don't=20 support them like Linear does.

Yes, TINA. But engineers don't want umpteen simulators, they want one. And LTSpice clearly took the cake, there is nothing that others can do to undo that. Unless someone furnishes a freebie SW that has nicer schematic capture with netlisting capability.

The worst are canned programs like WebBench. For me it never worked, not once. "Cannot be designed ... blah, blah, blah". All in production now :-)

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Regards, Joerg

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Yeah, they have a simulator (not sure it's SPICE based) but it really rots. I bought the upgrade so can add models. What a piece of crap!

Last time I looked at it, they were just licensing Tina

This is likely because finding people like Mike Engelhardt, who single-handedly progarmmed up LTspice, are pretty hard to come by -- when LTspice first came out, there were people who refused to believe Mike had whipped it up all by himself. ...And that unlike the multitudes of people who've just taken, e.g., the Berkeley SPICE source code, cleaned it up, and turned it into a product, Engelhardt has made a lot of significant improvements to the core simulation routines, which is what allows for easy integration of the behavioral models most of LT's switcher models use that make it so fast.

Hence I tend to agree that TI and all the other semiconductor manufacturers are now at a noticeable disadvantage relative to Linear. I am a little surprised that so far none of them seem to have even made an attempt to compete head-to-head with LTspice -- as good as it is, it does lack a lot of "niceties" regarding graphing and scripting, for instance, and these are the sorts of features that any good programmer can add; you don't need someone like Mike who understands fancy integration methods and Newton's method-as-extended-to-matrices and all the other nitty-gritty stuff the simulator core uses.

---Joel

Yes, I have a full Tina license. It sucks as a simulator but the schematic capture tool is simple to use. I bought it because I needed to add models and the TI version is crippled. As far as the TI version goes it's not too bad. It stops right there, though. The rest of the program is an aggravating piece of shit.

I've never gotten the "hang" of LT spice's schematic capture. When I've needed a simulator I've needed the results *now* and haven't been able to fiddle with LT Spice long enough to get anything useful out of it.

Why wouldn't they just start with another Spice derivative?

On Apr 7, 9:35=A0am, Joerg wrote: [...]

LTSpice does make a spice netlist. A few of the folks I work with have suggested making a prgram to convert the spice netlist to a PCB layout package version. Is this what you have in mind? If so, maybe I can do something.

It's a bit more intricate than that. It would need a real schematic editor similar to Orcad or Eagle, part fields, footprint info, and so on. It's something LTC really doesn't need so probably never going to happen. For example, without footprint info you cannot generate a useful netlist for a layouter.

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It might be of interest to lurkers here... Tanner Tools can now import either Microsim/PSpice Schematics (what I use) _or_ OrCAD Capture.

Had a visitation from that bunch a week and a half ago. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
      The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

only HV=20

sales=20

same

the=20

IIRC=20

overseas...

this=20

24=20

long=20

They=20

I am not so enamored with LTspice, the provided models for parts other = than=20 their own and a few select devices they like, to work with their stuff = the=20 user is partly SOL. Importing other model libraries from other = manufacturers=20 is becoming more difficult as the manufacturers are making them harder to= =20 find or no longer present them on the web.

It is near the best schematic capture i have used, two others i have used= beat=20 it. gEDA and friends has the best chance at displacing it but the = schematic=20 capture is clearly not as good. OTOH it bolts into a rather complete = suite.

=20

:-)

n

The methods of doing footprints that I was considering are:

(1) The footprints appear as "active comments" on the schematic. This would mean that every part would have to have a comment in a magic form such as "& Q21 TO-220UP" next to it. The comment would have to match the pattern names in the layout package.

(2) The footprint information would be in a spread sheet and turned into a CSV format file to be included into the netlist converters input.

(3) The parts in the schematic get the company part number on them The process would be like a mixture of (1) and (2)

I also considered making a pair of converters to go back and forth between LTspice and GEDA. This would convert the schematic between formats such that A -> B -> A gives back exactly what you started with in A.

I lean towards mfgs who do furnish SPICE models (NXP RF guys, are ya lis'nin?). Never had a real problem plugging them into LTSpice, mostly as an include file because its library handling is a bit iffy IMHO. Plus then I can send the directory to clients and know it'll run there without them scrambling for models.

You mean TINA is the best?

gEDA I have tried out, did not like it because it can't properly handle multi-part refdeses. So I'll keep using Eagle. That's really close to perfect _if_ it had a hierachical sheet structure. No simulator link though.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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only HV=20

area.

of=20

sales=20

same

the=20

IIRC=20

overseas...

this=20

at 24=20

long=20

They=20

=20

=20

one.=20

do=20

than=20

the=20

manufacturers=20

to=20

=20

I can handle doing devices one'sy-two'sy, it is whole libraries that i am= after. =20 for transistors it is not much of an issue, the symbol(s) is/are = standard. =20 Even the simple analog building blocks are ok, more complex blocks is = another matter.

used beat=20

schematic=20

suite.

No, i would have said so. My favorites are DOS TangoSchematic and DOS = CirCad.

though.

I may have to try EAGLE, the DRM flap bothers me far more than the lack = of=20 heirarchy. In the meantime i am tinkering with gEDA.

manufacturers

after.

matter.

Yeah, making blocks is tedious but I guess some self-training can fix that. And that includes myself, I am not that good at it either WRT LTSpice. With Eagle I sat down and forced myself to make intricate devices and now it's almost a breeze.

beat

The DOS SW was the best. Problem is, hardly anybody can read in that these days.

I never ran into DRM issues, in years. If you never build upon schematic parts and stuff from dubious sources (meaning guys who use cracked SW) you'll be ok. I've tried gEDA under Ubuntu but IMHO it ain't cut out for serious analog stuff. It has problems with refdeses in multipart devices and auto-annotation really made a mess out of such a schematic. When I mentioned that in the NG one of the gurus there flew off the handle, so I hung up on it.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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CirCad.

handle=20

=20

though.

lack of=20

=20

=20

=20

And when was this?

GEDA currently runs best in Red Hat/Fedora due to their support. If you=20 had a problem with the Ubuntu folks it may be their issues. Development=20 is current and very active. And no, it is all not that finished a = product,=20 but it is damn good for the price, especially considering it is supported= =20 at the same price.