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Proteus circuit software

From: Tom Leonhardt   tomtomnowhere.edu
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 14:46:36 -0800

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hi all,

This is a followup to a previous post looking for feeback on circuit design
software to purchase for InterAccess. The software I support us purchasing
is heavily based on the recommendation of Jim Ruxton, who has actually
tried out and used a number of these packages.

There may be some concern around whether to go with a PC or Mac based
package. The vast majority of software out there and used in industry is PC
based, so I feel it would be wise to go with that. This may be a pain for
those of us who mainly use Macs (myself included) but hey, it will give us
a good reason to come into IA and use the facilities.

The Proteus software is made by Labcenter Electronics in England <
http://www.labcenter.co.uk > and distributed locally by R4 Systems in
Newmarket. The software meets all the standard industry requirements
supporting file formats and does everything we need. It has been around a
long time and continues to be developed. The company has a good upgrade
policy of 100% buyback of lower level versions (so you don't loose any
money when upgrading) and will offer IA their educational discount of 20%.
From what I could gather in reviews their approach is to do a solid job of
core features over throwing in lots of bells and whistles to keep the
marketing department happy. Not that there aren't some interesting bells
and whistles. Jim feels it has the best, most intuitive interface and the
learning curve isn't too steep for newbies (like myself).

The 2 packages I'm recommending are:

Proteus PCB Design Level 1:
$CDN 600 (IA price)
- This is the entry level for Proteus PCB design and is limited in terms of
both functionality and pin count.
- Level 1 has a capacity of 1000 pins.
- Full feature schematic capture with support for hierarchical design, bus
pins, configurable bill of materials and much, much more.
- Netlist based PCB layout with support of up to 16 copper layers, 10nm
resolution, any angle component placement, full electrical and physical
design rule checks and much more.
- Standard version of our integrated auto-router. Support for one shaped
based ground plane per layer.
- Component libraries containing over 6000 parts.

Proteus Virtual Systems Modelling (VSM):
$CDN 800 (IA price)
- combines mixed mode circuit simulation, animated components and
microprocessor models to form a system that can simulate complete
microcontroller based designs. For the first time ever, it is possible to
develop and test such designs before a physical prototype is constructed.
This is possible because you can interact with the design using on screen
indicators such as LED and LCD displays and actuators  such as switches and
buttons. Proteus VSM also provides extensive debugging facilities including
breakpoints, and source level single stepping.

- of particular interest to us is the PIC168x Microcontroller Model which
models the behaviour of the PIC16x83 and PIC16x84 microcontrollers. The
main features of the model are:
-- Supports entire instruction set.
-- Supports all PORTA, PORTB and other I/O pin operations.
--Supports all on-chip peripherals including programmable timer, watchdog
timer and sleep mode and wake-up from sleep.
-- Supports internal EEPROM memory.
-- Supports all interrupt modes.
--Internally generated processor clock for better performance. I/O and
other event timing accurate to one clock period.
-- Provides internal consistency checks on code.
-- Fully integrated in to ISIS's source level debugging system and source
code management system. Support is included for
-- source level debugging with the Microchip? MPASM assembler and includes
register, memory (RAM and EEPROM), and stack
-- inspection windows.

- In addition to the microprocessor models, Proteus VSM includes a number
of other VSM models:
-- Models for 'virtual' instruments including an oscilloscope model, a
logic Analyser model and TTY terminal model.
-- An LCD model that models a number of common LCD display panels.
-- A universal keypad model that can model any number of matrix keypads.

If you have any comment or concerns about IA purchasing the above software,
please let them be known ASAP as I'm hoping to purchase this very soon.

thx,
tom



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