10 Feb
2023
10 Feb
'23
5:44 p.m.
Sandy wrote the original CDL tool set. It had a graphical front end that provided for
chips , pins,
wires etc and generated a connectivity list which was then consumed by wire wrap and other
back end
tools. We had Tek 4014 terminals at the time (late 70s is what I recall) which made all
this
reasonable.
I took it over the code base at some point and among other things added macros so that
repeated wire
to chip connection patterns and names could be generated without the labor intensive one
wire at a
time e.g. wire[0-7] connects to pin[0-7]. The macro would be expanded so that wire0
connected to
pin0 etc. This later system was call UCDS - Unix Circuit Design System.
UCDS was used by Joe Condon for the chess machine that he and Ken built. Ken may remember
more
about this. It was also one of the reasons that BTL got a $1B Navy contract.
Steve