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Description of Tango format?

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Tom Loredo

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Apr 29, 1997, 3:00:00 AM4/29/97
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Hi folks-

Many schematic capture programs produce output in Tango netlist
format, which I gather is a de facto standard for input to
PCB layout programs. Where can I find a description of the
format? I tried the Accel web site with no luck, and an
Alta Vista search for Tango turns up more Warez sites than
anything else (losers!).

Thanks for any tips you can offer,
-Tom Loredo

AbdulraHman Lomax

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May 7, 1997, 3:00:00 AM5/7/97
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Tom Loredo <lor...@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu> wrote:

>Many schematic capture programs produce output in Tango netlist
>format, which I gather is a de facto standard for input to
>PCB layout programs. Where can I find a description of the
>format?

It is probably too simple...

The Tango netlist is in plain ASCII and comes in two sections; the
first section is the part list, the second is the net list. All fields
are separated by CR/LF; records in the part list begin with [ and end
with ], and in the net list the delimiters are ( and ). The brackets
and parenthesis are also followed by CR/LF.

The part section allows five (or six?) fields. The first field is the
reference designator for the part (max 16 char), the second is the PCB
libary part name for the part PCB footprint (max 16 char), the third
is the type (max 32 char), the fourth is the value (max 32 char), and
the fifth (and sixth?) is not used as I recall.

The net section allows a variable number of fields in each record,
since there are a variable number of nodes in a net. The first field
is the net name (16 char), which must be unique. The succeeding fields
in the record are the node names, and the format for a node name is
Reference Designator (hyphen or comma) Pin designator. The pin
designator may be up to 16 characters.

Whatever is not between brackets or parentheses is ignored, so you can
put comments at the beginning, for example.

So here is a short net list:

this comment will be ignored.
[
R1
R400A
RES
1K

]
[
U1
DIP8
74LS00


]
[
J1
.156X4
MOLEX4


]
(
RESET
R1-1
U1-1
U1-2
J1-1
)
(
~RESET
U1-3
J1-2
)
(
VCC
J1-3
R1-2
U1-4
U1-5
U1-9
U1-10
U1-12
U1-13
U1-14
)
(
GND
U1-7
J1-4
)

AbdulraHman Lomax
mar...@ioa.com
P.O. Box 5123
Asheville, NC 28813


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