Re: gEDA-user: Successful project with gschem and PCB

[Karel Kulhavý <clock@twibright.com>]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 09:59:55PM -0400, Ales Hvezda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> >He who seeks an example of development with gschem and PCB may be
> >interested in Ronja Twister.
> 	
> 
> Nice!
> 
> Ronja is one of my favorite Internet hardware/software projects,
> mainly because:
> 
> 	1) The information to reproduce the hardware (and software) is  
> 	   under the GPL (or freely available).
> 
> 	and
> 
> 	2) The tools used in designing and implementing the project are
> 	   the free ones as well. 

Actually QCAD sucks because it's buggy and Andrew Mustun decided to make
it non-GPL starting from version 2. And I haven't found an alternative. This
pisses me off a bit ;-) If you know about some other reasonable 2D CAD
it would be exactly as you say ;-)

> 
> A great example of what is possible with free software EDA tools.
> This type of project is the reason I work on gEDA. :)

I think in the future much more will be posible.

And, it shows up, that advanced functionality is not a matter of high
technology, but matter of doing everything right. Everything done right can be
done by anyone regardless of his age, education, financial status etc.

For example there has been a link running for a year that connected a student
dormitory with 1000 students to backbone. The link is 940m long. And the
receiver cases have been made from tin from pineapple compote. And the
sensitive front stage MOS cascode can be allegedly taken out from trashed TV
set ;-) (however people always buy them in store ;-) )

And the link used to be pretty loaded, there used to be 3-hour periods in which
the load was purely 100% :)

I am looking forward to near future where all the hardware is free technology
designed with free software tools and the badly-behaving proprietary
manufacturers are fucked off ;-)

When PCB can design 8-layer board, why don't we have motherboards done with it?
With complete published building guide?

And complete computers? Networking hardware, TV sets, satellite receivers,
fridges, etc.?

I had a motherboard and spent 2 months debugging one sparse crash that occured
about once a day randomly, worse with higher load.  Also we replaced gradually
all components in the PC one by one which pissed the store completely off
(actually it was a good store).  Chipset nvidia nforce2.  The solution was to
switch off the usage of IO APIC in the kernel.  If the motherboard were free
technology, either

1) The kernel folks would have a complete documentation for it so didn't write
a buggy driver, or
2) I just dropped a mail to freemotherboard@freemotherboard.net and got
a reply: "please note there has been found a dynamic hazard between the south
and north bridge, it will be fixed in the next release of the board, please
apply this patch into your kernel".

And I wouldn't have to waste 2 months ;-)

> 
> [snip]				
> >I suggest Harry Eaton or someone else to consider a possibility of making some
> >kind of exctract from these and use it as example layout on PCB homepage
> >http://pcb.sourceforge.net so newcomers are able to determine how it all can b
> >e used.
> 
> 
> 	I will find some way of linking more prominately to Ronja as well.
> Thanks for the links!

Thanks :)

Cl<