-------------------------------------------------------- ARRL Radio Designer 1.0 ARD.TXT -- V 1.02 (21 Feb 1995) -------------------------------------------------------- This file, which contains information about the RF circuit modeling software product called ARRL Radio Designer, is a product of The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) 225 Main St Newington CT 06111 USA tel 203-594-0200 fax 203-594-0259 BBS 203-594-0306 e-mail hq@arrl.org supersedes the file ARD.TXT V 1.00 of 4 November 1994 This file looks best when viewed or printed with a fixed-pitch text font--for example, Courier or Courier New. Conventions: Asterisks (**) delimit italics, \/ delimits superscript, /\ delimits subscript. In the text to follow, the initial group *ARD* is sometimes used as an equivalent to the phrase *ARRL Radio Designer*. ******************************************************** * For the latest ARRL Radio Designer news, e-mail * * ARRL's automated info server at the Internet address * * * * info@arrl.org * * * * sending the four lines * * * * SEND ARD.TXT * * HELP * * INDEX * * QUIT * * * * You need not specify a subject unless your mailer * * requires it. The HELP line nets you the info server * * Help file; the INDEX line nets you the latest * * listing of all information files on the server. * * * * You can also download the latest ARD.TXT from the * * the ARRL BBS at 203-594-0306. * ******************************************************** Contents: (A) Latest ARRL Radio Designer 1.0 README.TXT (V 1.02, 22 Feb 1995) (B and later) Reserved. (A) -------------------------------------------------------- ARRL Radio Designer 1.0 README.TXT--V 1.02 (22 Feb 1995) -------------------------------------------------------- README.TXT contains information compiled after ARRL Radio Designer 1.0's printed documentation went to press. This README.TXT V 1.02 supersedes README.TXT V 1.01 of 4 November 1994. 1.x -- SETUP TOPICS 1.1 Canceling Setup by clicking on Cancel in the Installation Location dialog nonetheless may result in a partial or complete installation. This is a Setup bug. Use the Exit button (lower right screen corner) to exit Setup. Depending on when in the Setup sequence you exit, a subdirectory named as shown in Installation Location (default: ARRL) may still be created. 1.2 Erroneous "not enough space to install" message in ARRL Radio Designer Setup after trying to install in insufficient disk space. ARRL Radio Designer 1.0 requires at least 6 megabytes of free disk space to install without databanks, and at least 11 megabytes to install with databanks. Trying to install in insufficient disk space results in the "Severe" dialog message There is not enough space on the target disk to complete the installation as requested. Once this message has popped, you must exit and rerun Setup to install ARRL Radio Designer, even if you switch to a file manager and clear sufficient disk space. Otherwise, Setup will continue to erroneously report insufficient disk space even if sufficient space exists. To exit Setup at this juncture: Click on OK in the Severe dialog. The Installation Location dialog reappears. Instead of clicking on Cancel in the Installation Location dialog, click the Exit button in the lower right screen corner. An Exit Setup dialog appears; click on Exit. Then rerun Setup when you're sure you have enough space to complete the installation you want. 1.3 Installation Disk 1 and Disk 2 serial number disagree. Some installation disk sets bear different Disk 1 and Disk 2 serial numbers; among these, some number pairs are not sequential. Record the Disk 1 number in the serial number field on your registration card. 2.x -- TROUBLESHOOTING TOPICS 2.1 Correcting system hangs. If your system hangs--that is, freezes in midflight and does not respond to keyboard and mouse input--during an ARRL Radio Designer session, your VGA display hardware and Windows video driver may conflict. Via the Options Change System Settings menu choice in Windows Setup, change Windows' Display driver to plain-vanilla VGA--just "VGA" in the Change System Settings Display menu. If this cures the hang, a video conflict is the probable cause. If this doesn't cure the hang, contact the ARRL Technical Information Service at 203-594- 0200 (voice), 203-594-0259 (fax) or via the Internet e-mail address hq@arrl.org. 3.x -- PROGRAM TOPICS 3.1 Edit menu items inactive but ungrayed with when a table window selected. This is a bug. To copy a table to the Windows Clipboard, right-click in the table window and select Copy to Clipboard. 3.2 Help button in Open Audit File dialog inactive. This is a bug. Audit Help is available via the Settings index choice in ARRL Radio Designer Help. 3.3 Closing the default graph produced by the Alt+A (analyze circuit and do admittance plot), Alt+I (analyze circuit and do impedance plot), Alt+P (analyze circuit and do polar plot) and Alt+R (analyze circuit and do rectangular plot) keyboard accelerators and then pressing any of these accelerators again generates an error message that leads to closure of the graph. This is a bug connected with ARRL Radio Designer's Quick Reporter feature. Use Report Editor (AKA Linear Reports) instead. 3.4 The next keyboard or mouse event performed after the (spurious) keyboard accelerator command Alt+Z has been issued changes the status bar Linear indicator to Nonlin and renders the program unresponsive to further analysis and reporting commands. This is a bug. To regain control, exit the program and rerun it. 4.x DOCUMENTATION TOPICS 4.0 *ARRL Radio Designer Manual* Typographical Errors 4.0.1 Page 5-3: The formula alpha = beta/(1+2) should read alpha = beta/(1+beta). 4.0.2 Page 4-5: In the page's first item, the phrase "In the Report window, double-click on . . ." should read "In the Circuit editor window, double-click on . . ." 4.0.3 On page 4-24, the phrase "MS21=0DB" in the second-to-last netlist line on should read "MVG2=0DB". Relatedly, the "MS21" under "Parm" in the Statistics graphic on page 4-26 should read "MVG2". 4.0.4 On page 4-17, the attribution "James Lawson, K5IRK," should read "John Lawson, K5IRK." 4.1 Audit (Settings menu) coverage omitted in The ARRL Radio Designer Manual. The Audit feature is available via Settings or the hotkey Ctrl+T. Turning on Audit opens an Open File dialog that prompts you to name a preexisting or proposed *Audit file* (an ASCII text file with the extension .LST) in your ARRL Radio Designer directory. With Audit turned on, ARRL Radio Designer saves to the Audit file (appends to the file, if it already exists) the contents of any tables displayed at exit time. Audit can therefore be used as means of saving ARRL Radio Designer output data to disk in ASCII form. Note, however, that ARRL Radio Designer tables can also be saved in ASCII form by two command paths: (1) via the Reports Save Tables command (keyboard Ctrl+F7), which opens a dialog that prompts you for a filename with a default extension of .TXT; and (2) by copying them to the Windows Clipboard (right-click in a any table window to bring up the menu) and pasting them into a word processor capable of saving its contents to disk as ASCII text, such as Windows Notepad. 4.2 Misleading allusion to Windows Notepad as a means of importing databank data into netlists. On page 17-5 of The ARRL Radio Designer Manual, the section titled Data for ONE and TWO black-box elements includes the passage "Databank information can be manually copied in an ARRL Radio Designer netlist by opening the databank file with an ASCII text editor (Windows Notepad, for example) and copying it via [the] Windows Clipboard and ARRL Radio Designer's Circuit Editor." Many databank files exceed Notepad's maximum file-size limit, however. As an alternative, use Windows Write or another Windows word processor capable of reading ASCII files. 4.3 Manually imported databank data that does not include frequency units produces meaningless results and/ or the error message "Math error occurred. Program cannot continue." The convention for manufacturer-supplied SnP data requires that each data line's frequency specification (1) be in gigahertz and (2) omit the GHZ unit suffix, as in the S-parameter data line 0.047 0.77 -166 9.84 94 0.03 48 0.22 -88 where "0.047" means "0.047 GHz." The description on pages 17-10 through 17-15 of the data formats of standard (.flp) and secondary (.SnP) databank files, originally included as part of Compact's documentation of Super-Compact ability to pull in databank files *automatically* at analysis time notes, on page 17-14, that the default unit for *automatic* analysis-time data import in Super-Compact is gigahertz--but *this frequency-unit default does not operate for data hard- coded into a netlist's DATA block.*) A frequency spec of "0.1" on a databank line therefore means "100 MHz" when Super-Compact pulls it in on the fly, but "0.1 Hz" when Super-Compact or ARRL Radio Designer reads that line in from a hard-coded DATA block line. Data copied into the program *manually* for use with ONE and TWO elements therefore must include *fully explicit* frequency data--"fully explicit" as in "0.1GHZ" or "1E8" or "100MHZ", all of which specify the same frequency in ARD-speak. The data syntax shown in the Examples on page 17-6 (Data for ONE) and 17-8 (Data for TWO) therefore applies to databank data imported into ARRL Radio Designer by hand, with the further qualification that each data line's frequency spec must be fully explicit, as in 0.047GHZ 0.77 -166 9.84 94 0.03 48 0.22 -88 or 47MHZ 0.77 -166 9.84 94 0.03 48 0.22 -88 or 47E6 0.77 -166 9.84 94 0.03 48 0.22 -88 or 47000KHZ 0.77 -166 9.84 94 0.03 48 0.22 -88 --all of which specify the same S parameters at the same frequency. end of ARD.TXT Ver 1.02 (22 Feb 1994) .