
After 36 years as a paid product, the Micro-Cap Circuit Simulator is now free - lightlyused
http://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm
======
garganzol
The website says that the company was closed.

Does anyone have an insight on why Spectrum Software is now closed?

P.S. The man behind the company, Andy Thompson, seems to be an excessively
humble person. He left a lot of details in the mist. However, all these
details are priceless to us mere humans. Memoirs? A blog? 39 years in business
is not a small feat.

~~~
rubidium
Perhaps his humility is the most important lesson to learn, esp. in the
dominant culture of tech today.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
And maybe the true payments were the friends he made along the way...

There needs to be a name for this kind of dead end aphorism thinking.

~~~
justwalt
Cliche? Cheese?

“The true payments,” haha.

------
nrclark
This is very exciting! Especially the SPICE model library. Microcap's
libraries have lots of SPICE models that I haven't seen anywhere else. Being
able to grab them will be awesome, even if I wind up using them with LTSPICE.

~~~
willis936
I’m not familiar with microcap, but I am familiar with LTSpice. If they’re
both free SPICE GUIs, surely microcap must be better than LTSpice. I can’t
imagine any interface worse than LTSpice.

~~~
madengr
More than just GUIs, rather SPICE compatible simulators. LTSpice has macro
models for most LT parts, that would not be compatible with MC. Likewise MC
probably has models that are not compatible with LTSpice.

Now I wish LTSpice would take MC GUI and features, and implement it with their
simulator. They should have bought it.

------
lsiebert
I really hope someone mirrors this on github or something, because there is no
guarantee that a website for a closed company will be around for any length of
time.

I lost some important records because yahoo shut down it's group archive last
year (and banned the archive team from saving stuff wtf), and it's been on my
mind lately.

~~~
betamaxthetape
We (ArchiveTeam) are still trying to archive portions of Yahoo Groups (our
methods have changed a bit since Yahoo turned off the web archive in December,
but the data isn't deleted until Jan 31).

What's the name of the group?

------
macintux
40 years isn’t bad for a small software shop. I hope Mr. Thompson is satisfied
with how things turned out.

Anyone here use the software?

~~~
madengr
I used this in 1991 as an EE undergrad. I initially used it on my 8086, 4.77
MHz XT. It took several minutes to simulate a simple common emitter amp. I
don’t remember if I had an 8087 FPU.

I then bought a 486DX, 50 MHz and the same simulation was finished before the
mouse button lifted.

Fun times. Microcap was really cool at the time as it was the only GUI based
SPICE, and the student version was under $50.

Nowadays I use LTSpice specifically since LT makes good switching regulators,
and only develops those models for LTSpice. Otherwise I use Microwave Office.

MC still looks much more polished than LTSpice, at least the GUI. Schematic
entry in LTSpice is still abysmal.

~~~
m0xte
Yes also LTspice has some horrible clunk and bugs in it.

------
gowld
How does this compare to modern circuit simulators?

[https://www.tinkercad.com/](https://www.tinkercad.com/) (Web)

[http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/](http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/)
(Windows)

~~~
madengr
It doesn’t. Those are not professional level simulators.

MC is a modern simulator, and professional level. I assume the guy is
retiring. You are not going to be simulating large ICs, but it’s still plenty
good for other stuff.

------
emmanueloga_
There's so pretty much seemingly unique proprietary software. A while ago I
found this awesome logic minimizer called "logic Friday". [1] I don't think
there's a free or open source version of a tool like this.

I have an idea that the "espresso" algorithm could be used to minimize not
only electronic circuits but general boolean expressions for any programming
language... I think it would do for a useful refactoring tool.

1:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontrak.com/screenshots.html)

~~~
Gracana
I like Helmut Neemann's _Digital_ :
[https://github.com/hneemann/Digital](https://github.com/hneemann/Digital)

It simulates logic, supports automated testing, simulates and analyses
combinatorial and sequential logic, comes with a large library of components
(generic stuff, specific 7400 logic, displays and memories, etc), it can
output VHDL or Verilog, and it can export JEDEC files for GALs.

~~~
emmanueloga_
Looks great, I'll give it a try! Looks like it implements a different
minimization algorithm [1].

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algorithm)

~~~
TimTheTinker
Quine McCluskey is equivalent to using Karnaugh maps. Both are basic digital
logic minimization workflows, and are taught in any course covering digital
logic or CS-focused discrete math.

------
peter_retief
I have never heard of this, is it appropriate to ask if anyone could describe
it in one sentence?

~~~
scaryclam
It's software for simulating circuits.

~~~
peter_retief
At the moment I use Linux (Didn't see any Linux ports?) with ngSpice, I
haven't found ngSpice that useful though

~~~
forgotpwd16
Micro-Cap is Windows-only software (it runs on Linux via Wine though) and
perhaps more accessible than your current (which probably is "make circuits
somewhere, generate netlist, simulate with ngspice, analyze somewhere else")
workflow as it has an integrated schematic editor. The most powerful Linux
alternative to Micro-Cap et al is probably KiCad.

~~~
peter_retief
Thanks, I will stick to KiCad and ngspice (when I need it) I am a hobbyist and
dont have complicated needs. Not a fan of Wine.

------
forgotpwd16
_Free as in beer._ It will have been ever better if it had been released as
free software.

------
scrumper
Is this good for analog stuff, at least as effective as LTSpice?

I've been using the latter on a Mac for simulating vacuum tube (UK: valve)
circuits with some success and a very large amount of frustration. I would
love something a little less actively user-hostile...

~~~
compumike
What makes LTSpice seem so "actively user-hostile" to you?

(Founder of [https://www.circuitlab.com/](https://www.circuitlab.com/) (YC
W13), an analog circuit simulator that many universities have now started
using.)

~~~
scrumper
I didn't grow up with it, so coming at it from a perspective of someone who's
gotten used to modern software, it's remarkably hard to learn.

The interface is weird. Placement of components isn't so bad but when you want
to do stuff like move them or rotate, you fall into this strange mode system
that's unlike any other software I've ever used.

Including models is done by writing arcane text commands on the diagram. And
also by setting parameters in a hidden window on the component diagram itself.

Models != visual components.

Sometimes I have to set the model designator for a component in the UI twice
before it'll "take". That's hostile!

Finickity pin alignment on custom/3rd party components sometimes leads to open
circuits when they look closed.

The parameter/settings windows are cryptic.

The wire drawing tool is really nice though.

It's obviously better than writing a setlist in TextEdit but I've found the
learning curve very steep, with all the underlying complexity of Spice
exposed. The fairly prehistoric interface paradigm that means that any muscle
memory and expectations from using any other graphical software just don't
help. In fact, they hurt.

I tried your thing when I was looking for circuit design software. I liked it.
It didn't have any vacuum tube models at the time (not that I blame you, it's
niche) and so I couldn't use it for what I needed.

~~~
compumike
Those all make sense. Thanks!

~~~
scrumper
Happy to help. I'll keep an eye on Circuitlab too - thanks for the reminder of
that.

------
ngcc_hk
Open source possible?

~~~
fizixer
ngspice

------
modo_mario
Any chance of it becoming FOSS?

------
extra__tofu
Wow, used this extensively in my undergrad. Always used the free version. I
remember occasionally running into the "too many nodes" error. Thanks to the
creator for releasing the full version for free. I'm sure many EE undergrads
will be grateful.

------
znpy
It seems to be working with Wine under GNU/Linux.

I'll try it better when I get home.

------
anonymou2
free as in free beer

------
dang
I pinched the title from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077)
since it's more informative. If this is inaccurate, please let us know.
(Submitted title was "Micro-Cap User Downloads – Now Free".)

------
monoideism
I'd love to try it out, but I'm not downloading an executable from an `http`
URL.

Edit: I hope the downvotes are because it supports `https` (just not by
default, thanks to progman32 for correcting me) and not because you think that
not wanting to download an executable over an open connection is an
unreasonable thing.

~~~
onion2k
How is downloading a executable over https safer? It mitigates man-in-the-
middle attacks that could modify the compressed artefact on the fly, but
that's possibly the least likely attack on a download imaginable. It's _far_
more likely that an attacker would try to replace the file on the server (that
way they can also change and documentation around the file, like the reported
MD5/SHA hash you might use to check the file is correct). Why would you
happily download that over https?

If you're security conscious enough to not download random executables over
http then you really should be aware that it's 99% as dangerous to download
them over _any_ link.

~~~
blincoln
On most networks, anyone else on the same subnet as your IP can hijack your
connection using ARP spoofing and send you whatever they want if you're
connecting over Http instead of HTTPS. That's usually a lot easier to pull off
than compromising the server and replacing the content there.

~~~
ta999999171
Something to think about for anyone still putting Google and Amazon devices on
the same WiFi network as their phone and other PCs.

