Thanks for the recommendation I went ahead and downloaded LTSpice, looks good. I have been using an application called Yenka that seemed to be good but I can't judge it for what I don't know it's missing
MrAl, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at math but to be honest I haven't used the hard stuff since college (so no asking me to find the integral of anything); I think I may be ok though.
After reading your post about designing CPUs out of discrete 7400 series chips I had to do some googling on the subject and all I am thinking about now is *future project*