Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

## 1-2: Requirements

Electric can run on all of the popular computer platforms in use today. Besides being UNIX compatible, it can also run under Windows and on the Macintosh. Separate installation instructions are given in the following sections.

Windows users must be running Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or any later version (98/ME/2000/XP).

Macintosh users must be running System 7 or later.

UNIX users will find that the system runs on most variants.

Electric is not a small program. It needs from 8 to 16 megabytes of memory, depending on the platform. However, any serious design effort demands much more. This is because the program grows with the amount of circuitry being designed, so large designs require large amounts of physical memory to avoid thrashing delays.

On disk, you will need at least 30 megabytes of free space in order to install Electric. This is because the source code is 15 megabytes, and there are various support files and libraries as well. Keep in mind that a single distribution includes support files for UNIX, Windows, and Machintosh systems, so you can eventually prune what you do not need.

In addition to memory requirements, the workstation must be color (Windows requires 65536 colors or more).

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