Where to get Free SPICE

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Contents:

[Document Version: 3.07] [Last Updated: 12/17/96]

1. Introduction

  1.1) Contributors

Ralf von Gunten, Rich Kottke, Steve Johnson, James Lewis Nance, Al Davis, Jeff B, Dan Bright, Marten Maschmann, Brett Larson, Craig Groeschel, and seiler@compass-da.com.

  1.2) About the Author & Copyright

Author: Filip Gieszczykiewicz
E-Mail: filipg@repairfaq.org
Corrections/suggestions:

| [mailto:filipg@repairfaq.org]

Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997
All Rights Reserved

Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is permitted if both of the following conditions are satisfied:

  1. This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning.
  2. There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying.

Notice: What I know ends up in this list...

Sigh... I need to keep reminding myself, 'keep calm... it's for the good of the readers'... I needed a big dose of that, for the second time. This world has too many [BEEP]ing lawyers...

2. IBM PC and clones

  2.1) MS-Windoze (3.1 & 3.11)

    2.1.1) PSPICE 7.1

Note: You WILL NEED the latest Win32s DLL for Non-Win95 from Microsoft. I'll add a link here eventually (ie. when I get back :-) but for now, search for it on www.shareware.com (no afiliation).

Evaluation version of MicroSim PSPICE 7.1 for Windows 3.1 is now available:

If you can grab one huge (13MB) file:

Or in 1.44MB segments (consider one error in above can ruin your whole day):

Pet peeve: I wish they would get a mirror... you'll see why... [hint:be ready to do dinner while downloading].

    2.1.2) PSPICE 6.2

Evaluation version of MicroSim PSPICE 6.2 for Windows 3.1 is now available:

You can ftp version 6.2 for Windows from the site ftp.ee.ualberta.ca in directory /pub/electrical/win3/microsim/pspice6.2/ and files:

Get it as one ~9MB file: pspice62.zip (ZIP 8826KB)

or broken up into disks:

    2.1.3) PSPICE 6.0

Evaluation version of MicroSim PSPICE 6.0 for Windows 3.1 is now available:

You can ftp version 6.0 for Windows from the site ftp.ee.ualberta.ca in directory /pub/electrical/win3 and files:

    2.1.4) PSpice 5.4

MicroSim PSpice 5.4 for Windows 3.xx... Here are the mirrors:

    2.1.5) Micro-Cap V

Gilbert Circuit and Analysis

Micro-Cap V is an integrated schematic editor and analog/digital simulator that provides an interactive sketch and simulate environment for electronics engineers. Micro-Cap V, the fifth generation of the Micro-Cap family, blends a modern, Windows-based user interface with the robust and powerful numerical algorithms of SPICE and a fast, native, PSpice-compatible, digital simulator. The result is the most powerful and easiest to use circuit simulator available for personal computers. Micro-Cap V is affordable as well, available at less than half the cost of comparable programs.

Windows 3.1, Windows NT, or Windows 95 working-DEMO 1.4MB

The demo is contained in a .ZIP file. PKUNZIP this file, and then run the SETUP.EXE file under Windows 3.1, Windows NT, or Windows 95. During the installation, it will request a Disk 2. When this prompt comes up, just hit Enter. If you want to transfer the unzipped files over to floppy disks, all of the files go on Disk 1 except for the file MC5.2 which goes on Disk 2.

You may also Request MC5 Demo Documentation to be sent in the [surface] mail.

You can get a LOT more information from:
http://www.spectrum-soft.com/demo.html

    2.1.6) AIM-Spice (core based on 3e1)

Automatic Integrated Circuit Modeling Spice (AIM-Spice) is a new version of SPICE, the most commonly used analog circuit simulator today.

A detailed information on AIM-Spice is given in the following book: K. Lee, M. Shur, T. A. Fjeldly, and T. Ytterdal, Semiconductor Device Modeling for VLSI, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1993), ISBN 0-13-805656-0.

Don't forget to read the on-line corrections to the book (R - 12KB)

Read all about the features and documentation on the AIM-Spice Home Page (R)

Installation Directions (R) are provided for all the version Windows.

On site sdlsun4.ee.virginia.edu in directory /pub you will find file aimstud.zip (1224047 bytes) which is a STUDent version of AIM Spice that runs under Windows 3.1. It can plot node voltages or currents during the simulation and also has an AIM-POSTPROCESSOR which is quite a powerful plotting utility.

    2.1.7) Spice32 & Nutmeg32 (Spice 3f4)

I have updated my Spice32 / Nutmeg32 for Windows 3.1. It is now up to Berkeley's 3f4 level and supports copy to clipboard of enhanced meta files. These are limited to 32 nodes, which satisfies my anxiety with regard to the DOD export restrictions.

The price is $295.00 for the unlimited version and $99.00 for a 120 node version, $1000 for a site license.

Grab all the file on host csustan.csustan.edu in directory /pub/spice/i386:

(From the Editor)

I have been informed by Tom Bruhns that this Spice program is a limited version of the official program - a demo, if you please.

    2.1.8) Spice32 & Nutmeg32 (Spice older (3f2))

You can ftp Spice32 & Nutmeg32 for WindowsNT & Windows 3.1 from the site ftp.ee.ualberta.ca in directory /pub/electrical/win3 and files:

  2.2) OS/2

    2.2.1) Spice 3f3

If anyone's interested, I have recently finished a port of spice3f3 to OS/2, using emx08h, and JM's svgakit1.8. The program runs in a full-screen OS/2 session and features an interactive interpreter, with VGA graphics and on-line help. I'm looking for people to test the software, so that I can identify and fix any problems.

If interested, send e-mail to: bright@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

    2.2.2) UC Berkeley Spice 3f2

Ported to OS/2 by Andrew Brush

This is the port of Berkeley Spice 3f2 to the OS/2 operating system. It is a text-mode app, with no ON-SCREEN graphical interface. The "hardcopy" function IS enabled, and will produce PostScript files, if the hardcopy device is set properly. Note that the spinit file furnished by me will set the hardcopy device to postscript.

There are probably some bugs in this port. One of them that I know about relates to the flushing of I/O. It shows up in spice's "more" function. Whenever a screen-full of information is shown, and you should obviously enter a selection or hit "enter" for more, the prompt will not display until AFTER you make the selection. This is because the default I/O flushing in OS/2 is different from UNIX. I will try to get this right in 3f3-1.

This version of spice contains nutmeg, the spice postprocessor. This is a powerful tool for, for example, making vector calculations on ac sweep results to determine various impedances and gaind in one ac run. Nutmeg is built-in to spice.exe. All the interactive nutmeg commands will work from the spice prompt. See the on-line help for info on the commands.

The on-line help files furnished by Berkeley are available by typing "help" at the spice prompt. This file contains nearly all the information you can get from the Berkeley user manual. Unfortunately, not ALL of the features that are new for Spice 3f are listed in the on-line help.

I have included the source to Spice 3f3-1 on-line help as man/spice.txt. Also, the UNIX man-pages for spice and nutmeg are included in the man directory. I think the command-line options for nutmeg also apply to this version of nutmeg-enabled Spice.

If you wish to ask me a question, or report another bug, please E-mail to auburn@apk.net.

You can get it from any if these mirrors:

    2.2.3) PSpice (16-bit) 4.03

MicroSim PSpice will run on any 80286/80386/80486 based PC with an 8087/287/387 floating-point coprocessor (optional for the evaluation version), the OS/2 operating system, and a minimum of 2 megabytes of memory (for the OS/2 operating system). PSpice will run on a system with 2 megabytes of memory, but the program will be swapping back and forth to disk due to the virtual memory. We recommend that your system have 4 megabytes of memory in order for the PSpice package to run efficiently.

An IBM hardware-level compatible color graphics display must be used (CGA, EGA, or VGA) and no special brand of printer or special printer features are needed.

You can get it from any if these mirrors:

    2.2.4) Spice 2g6

This is a port of SPICE 2G.6 to OS/2 2.0. It was made exceptionally simple thanks to the EMX GCC compiler and F2C, the Fortran to C translation utility. I've only been using it for a few days, but so far there are no signs of problems.

This port is a FULL version. I didn't have to scale down anything to get it to work. Using the automatic optimization program that I mentioned above, I've run over 10000 spice simulations (in 2 days!) of a simple, 6-transistor circuit. With level 3 models each simulation takes about 9 seconds on my 486/33.

Judging from the benchmark results given in the circuits/ directory, my 486/33 seems to be comparable in speed to a MIPS M/800, or about 10x the speed of a VAX 11/780. For those who are interested, I used "f2c -A -E", followed by "gcc -O2" (the emx 0.8d version) to do the compilation from Berkeley Fortran sources. Any comments are welcome!

Marcel LeBlanc
mleblanc@netcom.com (last seen May 14 1995, FWIW)

You can get it from any of these mirrors:

  2.3) MS-DOS

    2.3.1) ACS 0.19

Al's Circuit Simulator 0.19, updated 10 Nov 1995

Several new options have been added to control iteration damping. In some cases, the program will take a partial step in an attempt to tame the wild fluctuations that can occur during iteration with Newton's method. This version appears to be considerably more robust than Spice 2g6. Several test circuits that fail to converge on Spice do converge on ACS. The cost of this is sometimes slower convergence. It generally takes about 2 more iterations per step than the previous version. This can be turned off, using the "dampstrategy" option at a slight cost in robustness. See the manual on the options command for more information.

ACS is a general purpose circuit simulator. It performs nonlinear dc and transient analyses, fourier analysis, and ac analysis linearized at an operating point. It is fully interactive and command driven. It can also be run in batch mode or as a server. The output is produced as it simulates. Spice compatible models for the MOSFET (level 1 and 2) and diode are included in this release.

A package including a printed copy of the manual and a disk with full source is available for $20 (US) including postage (to US and Canada) from Albert Davis, 136 Doncaster Rd., Rochester, NY 14623. A disk alone is available for $10 (US).

You can ftp ACS 0.19 for DOS from the site mammoth.lle.rochester.edu in directory /pub/local/acs and files:

You can ALSO ftp ACS 0.19 for DOS from the site cs.rit.edu in directory /pub/acs/ and files:

AND you can ALSO ftp ACS 0.19 for DOS from the site ee.rochester.edu in directory /pub/acs/ and files:

    2.3.2) PSPICE 6.0

Evaluation version of MicroSim PSPICE 6.0 for MS-DOS is now available:

You can ftp version 6.0 for MS-DOS from the site ftp.ee.ualberta.ca in directory /pub/electrical/win3 and files:

You can find a copy of it in directory /pub/cookbook/softw/ibm and files:

    2.3.3) Spice TR3e2bl

Spice TR3e2bl is a 32-bit PC(386/486) shareware version of SPICE 3e2. Spice TR3e2 may be run in either interactive or batch mode, and is intended for anyone who may want learn how to use Spice thru interactive practice (i.e. trial and error) -> without spending lots of money for the honor.

To keep the executable files small enough, only OP, AC, DC, transient, and fourier analysis are supported in Spice 3e2bl. Also, only the following device models are supported: resistors, capacitors, inductors, coupled inductors, linear sources, arbitrary non-linear sources, diodes, bipolar junction transistors, junction FETs, lossless transmission lines, lossy transmission lines, and voltage controlled switches.

(From Vladimir Koifman)

From the first sight it looks great. It is a full featured version, not limited by number of nodes, devices or such. Some extra features like monte-carlo analysis are omitted making it very compact.

You can ftp spctr3e2.zip from the following mirrors:

    2.3.4) Symbolic Spice 1.0

Sspice is a Symbolic SPICE circuit analyzer and approximator. Input files are in the SPICE format and the program performs a symbolic AC analysis. Symbolic determinants are sorted with the additional option of numeric evaluation and even symbolic approximation. Besides accepting many of the standard SPICE definitions, Sspice also offers a variety of low and high frequency symbolic transistor models as well as some linear ICs. Menu options are available for evaluating 2nd order active RC circuits. These include identifying and solving filter formulas and approximating pole shift due to finite op-amp gain-bandwidth-product.

This DEMO Version has all of the features of the PRODUCTION Version but is limited to a 6x6 matrix. Ideal for students.

You can ftp sspice10.zip from the site oak.oakland.edu in directory /SimTel/msdos/electric and file:

    2.3.5) Spice 2g6

You can now obtain a copy of this very spice for IBM PC clones. It requires a 386 AND a 387 but gives you virtual memory up to 128MB. It runs under MS-DOS and will NOT run under Windows! Please note that you will need DJGPP & F2C_LIB0 to build it from source.

This article was processed/generated by Filip Gieszczykiewicz | [mailto]. The most recent version is available on the WWW server http://www.repairfaq.org/ [Copyright] [Disclaimer]