Re: [avr-chat] ATmega644 : dual USART... or not dual usart.. that, is the question !

[Bob Paddock]

> gEDA has got a not so bad reputation lately

A lot of work has go into gEDA by some new blood
in the last couple of years, getting better all of the time.

gEDA's home page moved to http://www.gpleda.org/
yesterday.  The PCB part of gEDA is now funded by
the Linux Fund (Other than an issue with
printing that I've got to work out, PCB works fine
on Windows too).

>albeit it still suffers a little from being a collection of individual >tools 
>that have not been designed to be a single package >from ground up, so each 
>tool uses a different approach in the >UI.

That problem still does exist by default, however key bindings
and menus in PCB are now changeable without digging into
the source code.

> I have used pcb (the layout part of
> what later became gEDA) years before, and while it took >some time to get 
> used to it, I don't remember any horror >stories. ;-)

http://www.gpleda.org/links.html has links to many projects,
many AVR based.

The horror stories that I know of, all relate to bad
footprints.  Same problem all layout programs have.
Just got the solder mask wrong on my own Tiny88 MLF,
project.  That is why you build prototypes...

> I don't really know how well Kicad is doing these days

Lots of people like it, but there have been a few complaints
of it crashing, especially at exit time.  This is a common
problem with wxWidget based programs if you delete
objects in the wrong order at close.  The sources of events
to an object must be deleted before the event sink is deleted.
An event sent to a deleted object will crash wxWidgets.

>  There are people who call it "Kinder-CAD"
> (children's CAD)

http://fritzing.org/ fits that area better.  It is intended for people
just learning layout, with the intention of moving up to gEDA (per the
Fritzing developer on the gEDA list).

http://scratch.mit.edu/ would be of interest to children learning
to program, not really PCB related, but probably possible.

> restricted to two layers and an area of 100x160 mm²,

PCB has been used to do 8+ layers with 900+ pin BGAs,
it has no intentional restrictions.  It has a few practical
restrictions from unanticipated usage.  Someone on the gEDA list was
complainingthat it would not handle a board over two meters long,
believe it was some type of sign.

> excellent, and the autorouter does a good job at least in

The PCB default autorouter does an ok job, it does odd
things at times that makes you wonder "why did it do that?".
A topological autorouter was done as a Google Summer
of Code project last year.  It has not made it into the main
line branch yet.


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