Qspice Beta Testers

I signed up !

Qorvo was by the other day showing us their United SiC FETs and was surprised I knew about Qspice and the affiliation. I am sure it is going to be a very cool simulator. Can't wait to try it.

boB

This could be very interesting: The Grandmaster started with a clean sheet, unhindered by the vast existing spaghetti codebase, or IP conflicts and tangles.

I bet that QSPICE's code memory footprint is far smaller than LTspice.

I signed up as a beta tester as well.

Joe Gwinn - who started with Spice 3f.5, and read Nagle's PhD Thesis at least two decades ago.

I've never been a beta tester. LTSpice IV is what I live by. What are the obligations of the tester?

Tell them about anything that doesn't work, in enough detail that they can reproduce the fault.

Much the same as being a Microsoft user, in practice. The assumption is that there will be more faults than in software you've paid for.

I wonder if it will have a modern UI, rather than the DOS inspired, logically inverted, bit of renaissance coding that LTspice is?

I'm thinking not, since it's being written by the same guy, but I'm willing to give it a chance.

Mike wrote LT spice from scratch. It's a true compiler and doesn't use the Berkeley code base. Code footprint doesn't matter any more, with common apps taking hundreds of megabytes. The runtime RAM use of LT Spice is initially 4.5 megabytes, and under 12M running and plotting the 6BK4 sim. Firefox is over 1G.

Next, I want Spice models for their RF parts.

Upgrade to XVII! It's worth the small hassle.

Now that you mention it, I think I knew that once.

Yes, we always had this problem with libraries, but many of those libraries were written for the purpose, and a simpler core is likely to pull less in. We shall see.

And old code gets pretty crufty, and it's necessary to burn it to the ground and start over from time to time. Cue "Tobacco Road":

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There may be hope, because from Mike's talk it sounds like Qorvo bought into Mike's business model as well.

Joe Gwinn

Evidently the new LTspice 17.1 doesn't support schematic preview while browsing for files. :{ I'll get over it -

boB

The little thumbnails? They are too tiny to be useful.

But I hope Analog Devices doesn't ruin LT Spice.

I guess I should save a backup copy of the current one, in case they do wreck it.

Just big enough to see at least how complicated the schematic is.

Me too.

Instead of just letting LTspice update from within the program, I download the .EXE or now, the .MSI files that contain the complete installation and put the date and/or the version number in the file name. So if a version screws something up, I can always go back to an older version. Disk space is cheap for this purpose.

boB

Yup. They’ve already broken the part selection dialogue—it goes out to lunch for several seconds when you start typing.

Does the .msi file need online access to install?

Looks like the Win7 version XVII is unsupported now.

No. It's the whole LTspice program.

Being able to install LTspice completely offline is important to me, too.

boB

At least those versions are completely usable and installable.

boB