Troubleshooting
A Convergence Failure Error is Displayed

A convergence failure means that the simulator is unable to simulate the circuit, often due to it having no stable state (for example, a NOT gate with the input and output connected together). Although it will not force you to stop the simulation, it is important to note that the results after a convergence failure has occurred may not be accurate.
Certain circuits, such as a latch made from NOR gates, will always cause a convergence failure at startup because they have no initial stable state on startup. In this case, the results will be invalid until the latch is set to a specific state.
User Interface is Slow or Unresponsive during Simulation
On some systems, where there are a large amount of transitions to be displayed on the graph view performance may be reduced. To resolve this issue several steps may be taken:
- Reduce the horizontal size of the graph by resizing the window
- Decrease the number of seconds per division
- Slow down the speed at which the circuit oscillates
- Close the graph view
"Failure to open file" Error is Displayed

This error message means that the simulator was unable to open the file. It will still try, where possible, to load the parts of the file it can understand, but there will likely be missing or incorrect components or wires. There are a number of possible causes:
- The file is not a Breadboard Simulator file. In this case, no circuit will load at all and an empty breadboard will be displayed. Please note that Breadboard Simulator cannot open files made using other circuit simulation programs.
- The file has been corrupted. Depending on the nature of the corruption, either no circuit will load at all, or a partial circuit will be loaded. In the former case, there is little that can be done unless a recent backup of the file exists (in which case, load the backup). In the latter case, the best solution (unless there is an up to date backup) is to rebuild the missing parts of the circuit.
- The file is from a newer version of Breadboard Simulator. In this case, the error has occurred because the file contains components or features that the version of Breadboard Simulator you are using does not understand. You will either need to open the circuit in the newer version of Breadboard Simulator, or rebuild the missing parts of the circuit using components and features in the version of Breadboard Simulator you are using.
Input Data is rejected

In order to prevent invalid values being entered and causing a crash or data corruption, the program validates data to ensure it will not cause problems. This means that:
- Component values and rail voltages must be valid numbers. Do not add any prefices or units - for component values, you can use the dropdown box to select an SI prefix (for example m, k, M, G, etc).
- Component values cannot be zero or negative. Zero or negative restances or capacitances would cause the simulator to fail. Represent zero ohm resistors using a wire or very low value resistor.