November 1992


	Acquiring Spice 3f2

For more information on how to acquire Spice3f2, please send your
physical mailing address to "ilpsoftware@berkeley.edu" and request a
software catalog.  This will give you all of the necessary information
for ordering Spice3f2 and other Berkeley CAD software, including an
order form and use agreements.  At last check, the cost for spice3f2
was $250.00 (this price may change without notice).


	Systems supported and Formats Supplied

Spice3f2 has been compiled on the following systems:
	Ultrix 4, RISC or VAX
	SunOS 4, Sun3 or Sun4
	AIX V3, RS/6000
	HP-UX 8.0, 9000/700
	MS-DOS on the IBM PC, using MicroSoft C 5.1 or later

The following systems have been successfully tested either in the past or
by someone outside of UC Berkeley.
	Dynix 3.0, Sequent Symmetry or Balance (does _not_ take advantage of 
		parallelism)
	HP-UX 7.0, 9000/300
	Irix 3.2, SGI Personal Iris
	NeXT 2.0
	Apple MacIntosh, Using Think C

Spice3f2 is distributed in source form only.  The C compiler "gcc" has
been used successfully to compile spice3f2, as well as the standard
compilers for the systems listed above.

Spice3 displays graphs under X11, PostScript, or a graphics-terminal
independent library, or as a crude, spice2-like line-printer plot.  On
the IBM PC, CGA, EGA, and VGA displays are supported through the
MicroSoft graphics library.  Note in particular that there is no
Suntools interface.

Note the the X11 interface to Spice3 expects realease 4 or later, and
requires the "Athena Widgets Toolkit" ("Xaw") which may be available
only in the "unsupported" portion of your vendor software.  A version
of "OpenWindows" has problems due to undefined routines during linking
-- linking with a null copy of these routines has reportedly worked, but
"OpenWindows" has not been tested in any way for this release.

Note that for practical performance a math co-processor is required for
an IBM PC based on the 286 processor.  A math co-processor is also
recommended for the more advanced IBM PC systems.

The Unix distribution comes on 1/2" 9-track tape in "tar" format, TK50 tape
(DEC tape), or QIC-150 1/4" cartridge tape (Sun cartridge tape).  The
MS-DOS distribution comes on several 3.5" floppy diskettes (both high
and low density) in the standard MS-DOS format.  The contents of both
distributions are identical, including file names.

	New features in 3f2

The following is a list of new features and fixes from the previous
major release of Spice3 (3e.2) (see the user's manual for details):

	AC and DC Sensitivity.
	MOS3 discontinuity fix ("kappa").
	Added a new JFET fitting parameter.
	Minor initial conditions fix.
	Rewritten or fixed "show" and "trace" commands.
	New interactive commands "showmod" and "alter".
	Minor bug-fixes to the Pole-Zero analysis.
	Miscellaneous bug fixes in the front end.

Additional features since release 3d.2 are:
	Lossy transmission line model (not available under MS-DOS).
	Proper calculation of sheet resistance in MOS models.
	A new command ("where") to aid in debugging troublesome circuits.
	Smith-chart plots improved.
	Arbitrary sources in subcircuits handled correctly.
	Arbitrary source reciprocal calculations and DC biasing
		now done correctly.
	Minor bug-fixes to the Pole-Zero analysis.
	Miscellaneous bug fixes in the front end.


	A Note on Version Numbering

Spice versions are numbered "NXM", where "N" is a number representing
the major release (as in re-write), "X" is a letter representing a
feature change reflected by a change in the documentation, and "M"
is a number indicating a minor revision or bug-patch number.


	FTP Access and Upgrades

There is no anonymous ftp access for the Spice3 source.  The manual for
spice3f2 (in it's postscript format) is available via anonymous ftp from
"ic.berkeley.edu" in the directory "pub/spice3/um.3f.ps/".  If you are
interested in the troff/me source, contact the email address below (the
"make" files and whatnot are somewhat cumbersome for the manual).

Patches or upgrades for Spice3 are _not_ normally supplied, however we
have made exceptions to this rule, particularly in the case of minor version
changes (such as 3f2 to 3f3).


	Email Address for Problems

Please direct technical inquiries to "spice@berkeley.edu" or
"spice-bugs@berkeley.edu" (for now these addresses are the same), and
ordering or redistribution queries to "ilpsoftware@berkeley.edu".  If you
find that your email to "spice" or "spice-bugs" doesn't get a response in
a few days, resend your message.