On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 07:09:38 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>From the LTspice List...
>
>"analogspiceman" analogspiceman 
>
>!!PING!! to Jim Thompson, Mike Engelhardt and anyone else who 
>might posses historical insider knowledge regarding PSpice...
>
>I am in the process of updating the depth and accuracy of the 
>historical SPICE page over at the LTwiki:
>
>http://ltwiki.org/?title=LTspice_Genealogy_-_The_Heritage_of_Simulation_Ubiquity
>
>A while ago I sent a request to Dr. Laurence Nagel to check the 
>Berkeley SPICE portion of the bullet point history documented over 
>at the LTwiki. He very graciously responded in a private email 
>with some corrections and some otherwise not previously published 
>information (I haven't incorporated his information yet). I also 
>sent a similar request to our own Mike Engelhardt, the author of 
>the subject of this Yahoo group, LTspice. He kindly provided some 
>tidbits of new information (which have already been incorporated 
>into the wiki) and hopefully will provide more now that he is back 
>from his excursion "down under." 
>
>But what I am looking for right now is to complete the section 
>about PSpice. Specifically, I have no idea who were the people 
>initial responsible for creating PSpice. Ian Wilson was hired as 
>a technical V.P. in the early days, was a frequent poster on usenet 
>and has a current Linkedin page, but he was not one of MicroSim's 
>founders (I will try to contact him to find out who was). Also, 
>I could not find any information as to when and at what revision 
>Probe became a part of PSpice. (Perhaps at the initial release?) 
>
>Then there is the meaning of name itself. I vaguely recall that 
>PSpice was at some point called uPspice (the 'u' being a micro 
>symbol), thus the acronym may have stood for micro-Processor SPICE 
>(others suggest it meant "Personal SPICE" or "Personal-computer 
>SPICE").
>
>Last of all, I would like to list the timing of the introduction 
>of the most important and innovative features of PSpice (a very 
>weak start at this is up on the LTwiki. 
>
>Dec 86: nonlinear Jiles/Atherton core model, 
>Apr 87: ideal switches, 
>Date?: proprietary IGBT model (and many other enhancements?)
>
>Any useful feedback and helpful information provided would be 
>greatly appreciated. -- a.s.
>		
>                                        ...Jim Thompson

Hi Jim,
Well, I was not an 'early' PSpice member.  I joined the team at
release 7.1, so I missed all the early history.  I suggest the folks
to look to for the details would be folks like Mohi (now at AWR), Greg
Roberts (Now at EMA and still working with PSpice) and of course,
Wolfram Blume, the founder of Microsim.

The name, as I was told, was for PC Spice, since it was a porting of
spice from Fortran to C on the IBM PC platform.  

As I recall, the original company Wolfram started was to make PCBs,
but when they needed to do some spice simulations, they hired some
software folks (Greg???) and ported SPICE to the PC.  The rest is
history...

Charlie

From the LTspice List...

"analogspiceman" analogspiceman 

!!PING!! to Jim Thompson, Mike Engelhardt and anyone else who 
might posses historical insider knowledge regarding PSpice...

I am in the process of updating the depth and accuracy of the 
historical SPICE page over at the LTwiki:

http://ltwiki.org/?title=LTspice_Genealogy_-_The_Heritage_of_Simulation_Ubiquity

A while ago I sent a request to Dr. Laurence Nagel to check the 
Berkeley SPICE portion of the bullet point history documented over 
at the LTwiki. He very graciously responded in a private email 
with some corrections and some otherwise not previously published 
information (I haven't incorporated his information yet). I also 
sent a similar request to our own Mike Engelhardt, the author of 
the subject of this Yahoo group, LTspice. He kindly provided some 
tidbits of new information (which have already been incorporated 
into the wiki) and hopefully will provide more now that he is back 
from his excursion "down under." 

But what I am looking for right now is to complete the section 
about PSpice. Specifically, I have no idea who were the people 
initial responsible for creating PSpice. Ian Wilson was hired as 
a technical V.P. in the early days, was a frequent poster on usenet 
and has a current Linkedin page, but he was not one of MicroSim's 
founders (I will try to contact him to find out who was). Also, 
I could not find any information as to when and at what revision 
Probe became a part of PSpice. (Perhaps at the initial release?) 

Then there is the meaning of name itself. I vaguely recall that 
PSpice was at some point called uPspice (the 'u' being a micro 
symbol), thus the acronym may have stood for micro-Processor SPICE 
(others suggest it meant "Personal SPICE" or "Personal-computer 
SPICE").

Last of all, I would like to list the timing of the introduction 
of the most important and innovative features of PSpice (a very 
weak start at this is up on the LTwiki. 

Dec 86: nonlinear Jiles/Atherton core model, 
Apr 87: ideal switches, 
Date?: proprietary IGBT model (and many other enhancements?)

Any useful feedback and helpful information provided would be 
greatly appreciated. -- a.s.
		
                                        ...Jim Thompson
-- 
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      |
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