On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 11:23 -0500, Timothy Miller wrote:

> We want to make this intuitive and easy to use.  But consider the
> audience.  Who is going to be analyzing PCI signals?

Me, for example.  Former coworkers of mine, for example.

It would be awfully nice if it could handle PCI-X though.

Just a single (selectable) high-speed analog signal would also be very,
very nice.  The resolution doesn't have to be great (4-bits?).  I've had
trouble with a card due to a bad combination of a motherboard that
really wasn't happy with two PCI-X cards on the same bus, verilog code
that reacted a tad slower than would've been preferable, and some
layout/electronics on the board that was a tiny little bit too bad.

>   For this
> purpose, aesthetics are useful only as clues that make it easier to
> use the program.

I am almost entirely in agreement with that.

I would add that aesthetics also make the user experience nicer, just
like car doors that make the right sound when you close them (there are
actually sound engineers who work on things like that!).

> Has anyone written any code for this yet?

I have written quite a bit of code for parsing VCD files, representing
digital signals in memory (and writing a VCD file back out), and GUI
code for viewing them.  And lots of code to make the program integrate
nicely with Gnome and to a certain extent any freedesktop.org
environment.

The program is not complete but there's not much left to do before it
becomes useful.

I was going to add support for something like this PCI analyzer to bølge
anyway for a hobby project of mine.  Part of that project involves a
simple 40MHz 8-channel logic analyzer with a USB interface built from an
8051, some RAM chips (interleaved) and some counters and latches.  It
should be possible to do everything with 1984-era electronics, save for
the USB connector.

> I recommend this book to anyone who designs anything:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107/sr=8-1/qid=1168964534/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-4137434-1839212?ie=UTF8&s=books

I second that recommendation.  I would supplement it with "Don't make me
think!".

-Peter

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