I was trying to test the ALU design presented previously when I realized something was wrong with the comparator. Now where did that design come from? I could not find it on the Internet (surprising) but this one looked good to me:

(source: http://fpgacenter.com/digit_dsgn/log_gates/comparator.php)

Anyway, not happy where did it come from? Eventually I found this:

(source: http://file.scirp.org/Html/2-7600304_41935.htm)

Which I recognised I had used as a base. This came from:

"Design of Low Power Comparator Using DG Gate" by Bahram Dehghan, Abdolreza Roozbeh and Jafar Zare.

This is a A>B comparator only.

So stripped out the bits I needed, converted to NAND gates and realized I could "mirror the circuit for A<B and reproduced my original circuit less the design error I had carried over. This time I did not to piggy-back off the ALU gates (so the comparator is now stand alone):

The Hazards of Teaching Yourself

In the above circuit I have some logic signal flags. Now I have had Tina Pro V5.5 for 10 years and did not know I could do this (the documentation is pretty bad). I have almost exclusively used Transient Analysis even for digital design. Now I am sure that if I did do a course then this feature would have been explained. (Note: I don't work in the electronics field. I was a mining engineer and we like to dig holes in the ground.)

Because Tina Pro 5.5 is pretty unstable I migrated to the Tina-TI version (and that does not have logic signal flags). I was only using Tina Pro 5.5 because I needed something better than Transient Analysis. If I went back then I would have to re-digitize most of my current work as Tina-TI does not export the really old file formats.

Crippled Software

I have looked at Tina 10 but the hobby versions are crippled for only small circuits and the unlimited version are crippling in price.

I have an old version of Cut2D (for CNC) that works really well and is unlimited. Cost about US$180 from memory a few years ago. The latest versions have gone the same way, crippled in capacity or crippling in price. Go figure! It not that there are no substitutes.

AlanX