At 01/06/05 19:20, Brad Velander wrote:
Leo,
my libraries are typically much larger (10 - 40MB) than the size mentioned in your reported size. I have never seen a problem. I don't think that the reported size is correct. Do you have the libraries stored in a DDB file? Have you compressed that DDB library file recently? DDB files can get quite large when they are not compressed regularly.

Well folks,

it took quite a bit of bit-digging but I finally found the cause for Protels' sudden interest in it's navel (didn't know it even had one, until yesterday afternoon :): for reasons as yet unknown the offending library was corrupted, big time. It started out fine but after twelve or so components the information was complete rubbish. Luckily I have the same setup with a 10-generation auto-backup every 10 minutes on three PC's, so I only needed to add one component to be back in business.

Brad: as a result of many earlier system crashes (on totally different PCs) I use the Windows file system for storage exclusively. Pro: no compression needed (ever) and all files are visible/manipulatable outside Protel. Con: directories look a bit cluttered. Note: our software developers had also noticed several qugs (quirky, bug-like events) in MS Access..

For those interested, while digging I found the really, really hard limits concerning PCB libraries:
1) a library can be a maximum of 4,294,967,295 (2^32-1) bytes long
2) component names have a maximum length of 255 characters
3) a component can be comprised of 65535 elements maximum
4) each element is stored as an ASCII 'record' of maximum 65535 characters long

Point 4 surprised me, too. After all, it is supposed to be a binary.......
Point 1 (and 4) effectively limits the maximum number of components because the file is sequential and internally uses 32-bit unsigned numbers for navigation. However, for all practical uses this is equal to no limit at all.

I now suspect the PC's hardware to produce intermittent memory and/or harddisk faults; they seem temperature related (most other crashes and failures occurred in the summer). Various memory test programs revealed nothing so far. Maybe I need a brand new one..... More backups and checks then, I hate to lose another day on this sort of crap....

Thanks,



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