> I remember I spend about $2k for it.

I would have been hand-taping in the late 70's, still have one or
two mylar films around here somewhere, as the photographic
process was still the most economic (and available) at the time.

Although I looked at several free-ish CAD systems (EasyCAD,
AutoTrax etc) ISTR they didn't compare too well with commercial
products like Protel, which was just way out of my price range. I
was still hand-taping boards, with some grumbling acceptance by
at least one local board house, until about 10 years ago

The obvious bottleneck was PC speed, particularly for functions
like autorouting

Then the supply of graphics dried up and forced my hand into CAD.
Started with Eagle and a reasonable PC and have stuck with it since,
no complaints. Even though I have a bona fide copy of Altium (not
paid for by me, thankfully)

Joe
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