Form Letter for Japanese and East Asian users
Original writing: 24 November 1997
Latest revision : 15 February 2017
Dear ATP EMTP-interested person:
The form letter now being read is a specially-modified version of
the North American form letter. It is used in Japan
and East Asia to license and distribute ATP materials with the
approval of:
Co-Chairmen of Canadian/American EMTP User Group
Dr. W. Scott Meyer Dr. Tsu-huei Liu
3179 Oak Tree Court
West Linn, Oregon 97068
U.S.A.
The Alternative Transients Program (ATP) is the most widely used
version of the Electromagnetic Transients program ( EMTP) in the
world today --- by far! In no small part, the acceptance of ATP is
due to its availability to nearly everyone in the world free of
royalty, and its compatibility with the computers of most common
interest.
EMTP was developed in the public domain at BPA (the Bonneville
Power Administration) prior to the commercial initiative in 1984
by DCG (the EMTP Development Coordination Group, with which BPA
has had no connection since expiration of the associated agreement
on the last day of 1987) and EPRI (the Electric Power Research
Institute of Palo Alto, California, USA). Whereas BPA work on EMTP
remains in the public domain by U.S. law (FOIA, the Freedom of
Information Act), ATP is not in the public domain. It is, however,
available free of all charge to anyone in the world who has not
participated voluntarily in the sale or attempted sale of any
electromagnetic transients program (hereafter called "EMTP
commerce").
Those who have engaged in EMTP commerce, but now wished they had
not, may contact the Can/Am user group to learn about conditions
of possible pardons.
Commercial competitors no longer are excluded from access to ATP.
This is a big change from earlier years. As explained in the
January, 1992, issue of the newsletter (story on pages 8-9), the
Can/Am user group has decided to approve the disclosure of ATP to,
and use by, any commercial developer of any competing
electromagnetic transients program on the same terms as work of
that commercial developer is made available to the general
community of ATP users. This is reciprocity.
Membership in EPRI, CEA, or CRIEPI (the latter two being DCG
members) does not, by itself, disqualify any organization from
access to ATP, it is important to note. Nor does use of the
DCG/EPRI EMTP that is licensed and distributed by EPRI. This is
the significance of the adverb "voluntarily." Clearly, few if any
EMTP users control the high-level politics that are associated
with membership in national organizations such as EPRI, CEA, or
CRIEPI, so membership alone will not be held against anyone. No
problem exists provided no significant resources (e.g., money,
technical advice, computer work, advertizing) have been
contributed directly to the joint DCG/EPRI commercial project.
An Intel 80386-based (or newer) microcomputer (IBM-standard PC) that supports MS-DOS or DR-DOS is the most common platform for support of ATP. The user should have more than 2 Mbytes of RAM, at least 10 extra Mbytes on his hard disk, some color-graphic monitor (yes, EGA is supported, although standard VGA is the most commonly used, and 600 x 800-pixel super VGA looks even better), and a mouse that is Microsoft-compatible (i.e., the 2-button standard). This is all that it takes to support the Salford version -- so named because it uses the DOS extender of the University of Salford in England. Other ATP versions are used under Microsoft Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. Although ATP is available for other computers, any potential user who is thinking about such alternatives is strongly advised to think again.
Each authorized user of ATP must agree not to disclose any ATP
information to unauthorized persons and / or organizations. A
non-disclosure agreement to this effect must be signed by each
potential user, and approved by the user group, before access to
ATP information will be granted. The form is attached as sheet
number 2 of this letter.
The sharing of ATP materials among authorized users is encouraged.
If one authorized user has newer or better materials than a second,
the first user is encouraged to share with the second.
Consultants and manufacturers who want to use ATP are encouraged
to do so provided there is no misrepresentation, particularly to
customers. In the case of commercial design and / or consulting,
this means that clients or potential clients must be notified
prominently, and at the earliest opportunity, about the EMTP
version that is being used (ATP), its royalty-free nature, and who
licenses its use. If the name DCG or EPRI is mentioned along with
EMTP, it must be explained that ATP has no connection with the
commercial product that is licensed by EPRI. Passing this form
letter to a client is an easy way of informing him.
Education is another activity that can profit from ATP use, but
only if several rules are carefully followed. First, there must be
no misrepresentation of ATP (same requirement as the preceding
paragraph) to potential students in any advertizing for the
course. Second, prior to the disclosure of any ATP materials to
any student, that student must be supplied with a copy of this
form letter, he must submit licensing, and his application must be
officially validated. Third, regarding access to ATP, all course
faculty are subject to the same restrictions as students. If
printed advertising for a course mentions ATP, it is strongly
recommended that wording be checked with the user group prior to
reproduction in order to avoid any possible misrepresentation.
Licensing to use ATP is free of all charge (it is just a piece of
paper). Once one is licensed, he is authorized to obtain ATP
materials from anyone (sharing among users is encouraged).
BPA is cooperating with the Can/Am user group for the
noncommercial development and use of ATP, readers are reminded. As
an agency of the U.S. government, BPA is accessible to the general
public, and BPA performs some services that are valuable to the
EMTP community. For example, BPA shares EMTP information with both
foreign EMTP user groups and selected cooperating individual
program developers and users. All inquiries about EMTP (nothing
else, please!) can be addressed to:
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Tsu-huei Liu or W. Scott Meyer
BPA, JH-2
P.O. Box 3621
Portland, Oregon 97208
USA |
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E-mail (Internet):
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Can/Am EMTP News is the name of the quarterly newsletter of the user group. The issues are dated January, April, July, and October, and all lengths since 1993 have been 20 pages. The newsletter is available free of charge to anyone, whether ATP licensed or not. Disk files began as WordPerfect 5.1 format, but later were switched to MS Word (.DOC files). Finally, only Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) files are released to the general public. These are readable using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (click on www.adobe.com/go/getreader to download the latest version). Newsletters are available from several storage sites on the Internet such as the web site of the European EMTP-ATP Users Group (www.eeug.org) or on the campus of Kyoto University in Kyoto, operated by the Japanese ATP User Group (http://alpha.kisarazu.ac.jp/~atp/index-e.htm and http://gundam.eei.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/atpwww/index-e.htm). Normal publication as just described ended with the April, 2004, issue. Finally, the European user group EEUG operates a free electronic bulletin board using address atp-emtp-l@listserv.dfn.de. Prof. M. Kizilcay, University of Siegen, is responsible for the operation of that mailing list. This is for ATP-related announcements, questions, answers, etc. The EEUG has published regularly EEUG News from 1995 until 2001, which contains besides technical papers, reader's corner and hints for program usage.
The general information about ATP is also published on a Web page
in Japan (http://alpha.kisarazu.ac.jp/~atp/index-e.htm and http://gundam.eei.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/atpwww/index-e.htm).
Dynamic dimensioning allows actual table space of Salford EMTP to
be fixed by the user at the start of execution. This began in
mid-October of 1993. Previously, table sizes were fixed as the
program was linked, resulting in names such as TP3 or TP20. These
are history. Now, the single TPBIG.EXE satisfies all users.
Other computers (not Intel-based) are compatible with ATP. In fact,
almost any modern computer of practical interest has been proven
to be compatible (more than 30 distinct systems have been tested).
ATP is supported on other computers in various places.
Yours sincerely
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Japanese ATP User Group (JAUG) |
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Masahiro Kan, Vice-Chairman
Toshiba Corporation , Kawasaki, Japan
Telephone : 81-44-288-6470
Fax : 81-44-270-1459
E-mail :
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ATTENTION!
Please check your ATP user group.
For example, China Korea and Australia are NOT in charge of JAUG.
Personal license is unacceptable in principle.
Please contact to JAUG secretary.
Student license will be rejected automatically.
Please contact to your professor.
Free e-mail address will be rejected automatically Please use the address of your organization.
It is recommended to print this form letter for your own records before proceeding with the ATP licensing agreement.
If the preceding form letter has not yet been read carefully,
do this before proceeding. Should any detail be unclear after
reading, contact the user group for clarification prior to the
submission of an application for free ATP licensing (next).
