protel autorax freebie help

[Trevor]

Hello all out there.

I have a problem with the frebie version of autotrax which I have
successully been using till now.

I am employed in an environment (emergency services) where Ioften
have an hour or two at work where I sit arround till a job comes in.
Untill recently I was able to work on th ePCB for my latest creation
(hobby) at work until they switched PCs to HPs. Now whenever I fire
up Traxedit, the command prompt locks up and can't even be closed down
- a hard reset is required to shut down the PC.

I've tried updating the videocard drivers on the PC, and using
various supplied and 3rd party graphics drivers for autotrax all to no
avail.

Anyone struck this before and know how to fix it? I don't want to
sit infront of the TV and be a vegie, and with 6month old twins at
home, this downtime at work is about the only time I get to do this
sort of stuff!

Thanx heaps

Trev

 

[budgie]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:49:04 +0930, Trevor
<trev.matthews@Nzemail.SPAM.com.au> wrote:

Hello all out there.

I have a problem with the frebie version of autotrax which I have
successully been using till now.

I am employed in an environment (emergency services) where Ioften
have an hour or two at work where I sit arround till a job comes in.
Untill recently I was able to work on th ePCB for my latest creation
(hobby) at work until they switched PCs to HPs. Now whenever I fire
up Traxedit, the command prompt locks up and can't even be closed down
- a hard reset is required to shut down the PC.

You haven't given us much info to go on - for example, which O/S were you
using/are you using now?

 

[Trevor]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:31:43 +0800, budgie <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:49:04 +0930, Trevor
trev.matthews@Nzemail.SPAM.com.au> wrote:

Hello all out there.

I have a problem with the frebie version of autotrax which I have
successully been using till now.

I am employed in an environment (emergency services) where Ioften
have an hour or two at work where I sit arround till a job comes in.
Untill recently I was able to work on th ePCB for my latest creation
(hobby) at work until they switched PCs to HPs. Now whenever I fire
up Traxedit, the command prompt locks up and can't even be closed down
- a hard reset is required to shut down the PC.

You haven't given us much info to go on - for example, which O/S were you
using/are you using now?
Work's computers are HP/compac machines running Win2K, and GeForce

vidoe cards. I am not at work so I can't give you the ram/video ram
sizes at the moment or other details, let me know what you would like
to know and I'll find out!

I've used various 'provided' resolution video drivers (VGA, EGA
etc) all to no avail, as well as www.airborn.com 's updated drivers -
these don't work either.

Don't know what else to try!

Trev

 

[ChrisGibboGibson]

budgie wrote:

I've used various 'provided' resolution video drivers (VGA, EGA
etc) all to no avail, as well as www.airborn.com 's updated drivers -
these don't work either.

Video driver problems would be my first suggestion but as you say you've tried
loads I'll suggest something that I've had a problem with once, but only once.

Autotrax has run for me on lots of different machines without any problems with
one exception.

I needed to set setver to 3.30 in order for it to run. No idea why, but it's
worth a try.

The early versions of Trax*plot* all needed it setting (though in that case it
gave an overlay error - not locked the machine up) which I why I thought I'd
give it a go and it worked on Autotrax. But it only ever happened on one
machine.

Gibbo

 

[budgie]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 08:21:56 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:

I went down that track a few months ago, looking for a Windoze
compatible progam to replace Orcad SDT and Protel Autotrax, which I have
used for years.

Best seemed to me to be EZPC from Number One systems. At least the
schematic capture and PCB is integrated, and the drawing commands are
common between the SCH and PCB. The editing is not as good as Protel,
but its ok.
No you cant import Orcad files, but you can import Gerbers made by
Protel, and use them as templates to re-create PCBs.

I tried several other packages in the under AU$1000 class, but none were
anywhere near acceptable.

You've just enunciated why many people stick with AutoTrax on an old platform.
Unless you want to spend real $$ and face the transition (aka loss of
productivity on the learning curve) to a more feature-packed whizz-bang
naughties product, sticking with AutoTrax has a lot to recommend it.

 

[ChrisGibboGibson]

Mike Diack wrote:

You've just enunciated why many people stick with AutoTrax on an old
platform. Unless you want to spend real $$ and face the transition
(aka loss of productivity on the learning curve) to a more
feature-packed whizz-bang naughties product, sticking with AutoTrax
has a lot to recommend it.

Yup, I keep a 486 dosbox running Autotrax just for that reason, and
consistently get more done with it than the 2.4GHz P4 running much later
variants of Protel. The machine is beneath the kids contempt so they
leave it alone as well. Never gets sick because it's not hooked to
anything, and has a book value of around 0.02c. There's also the
investment in custom built library components to consider.
M

I recently had need to set up another PC with AutoTrax on it.

I went to the local small computer shop (who has never let me down) and told
him what spec I needed.

He laughed, pointed at a pentium in the corner, 64Mb Ram, 500Mb hard drive,
floppy and super VGA. He said "take that, if it does what you need, next time
you're in buy me a pint, if it doesn't do what you need, don't bring it back
here, throw it in the skip".

Such value!

Gibbo

 

[Adrian Jansen]

I fully agree with keeping an old machine to run legacy programs. In
fact I have two, a 386 running DOS ( and 5 1/4 floppy ), and a 486
running Windoze 95, just to keep old stuff going. But the lack of
integration between PCB and schematic, plus the need to send customers
PDF prints of schematics and other documentation finally made me change
to EZPC. The pin limited versions are pretty cheap.


--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

 

[budgie]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:02:04 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:

I fully agree with keeping an old machine to run legacy programs. In
fact I have two, a 386 running DOS ( and 5 1/4 floppy ), and a 486
running Windoze 95, just to keep old stuff going. But the lack of
integration between PCB and schematic, plus the need to send customers
PDF prints of schematics and other documentation finally made me change
to EZPC. The pin limited versions are pretty cheap.

Are you talking pdf for prod or just for checking? I use a freebie pdf
converter that takes the postscript output from TraxPlot and creates absolutely
ideal pdfs for client review.

 

[Alan]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:10:21 +0800, budgie <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:12:20 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:

budgie wrote:

I have slowly made the
transition to Schematic for DOS, but still hand-place and hand-route in AutoTrax
so in my situation there's no dialogue between schematic and pcb.

You can use the Netcheck facility of Autotrax/Schmatic to check your

layout when you have finished.

The trouble with this is that simple components like Rs and Cs have
"orientation" in both Autotrax and Schmatic, ie one end of the
component is pin 1 and the other end is pin 2 so you have to go
through a process of rotating components until the Netcheck comes up
right. When you've finished though you at least know the layout
matches the schematic.

Alan

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jenal Communications
Manufacturers and Suppliers of HF Selcall
P O Box 1108, Morley, WA, 6943
Tel: +61 8 9370 5533 Fax +61 8 9467 6146
Web Site: http://www.jenal.com
e-mail: http://www.jenal.com/?p=1
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Adrian Jansen]

Trevor wrote:

On 25 Oct 2004 16:04:39 GMT, chrisgibbogibson@aol.com
(ChrisGibboGibson) wrote:


budgie wrote:


I've used various 'provided' resolution video drivers (VGA, EGA
etc) all to no avail, as well as www.airborn.com 's updated drivers -
these don't work either.


Video driver problems would be my first suggestion but as you say you've tried
loads I'll suggest something that I've had a problem with once, but only once.

Autotrax has run for me on lots of different machines without any problems with
one exception.

I needed to set setver to 3.30 in order for it to run. No idea why, but it's
worth a try.

The early versions of Trax*plot* all needed it setting (though in that case it
gave an overlay error - not locked the machine up) which I why I thought I'd
give it a go and it worked on Autotrax. But it only ever happened on one
machine.

Gibbo



Havn't tried your suggestion yet, but by mucking around with pif
setting managed to get the cmd prompt to dialog an unrecognised opcode
error after a pressing <enter> on a blank screen. Allows me to try
various options without rebooting!

As to the other question about what's changed - the IT department
swaps PCs over very three years or so - once the warentee has run out,
and after the last change traxedit has stopped working! Just from a
machine upgrade - can't remember if the've changed manufaturers - I
think we've been using Compaq for a while but can't quite remeber.


Is there any other (reasonable) PCB design programs out there that
are low cost (and hopefully can read protel format files?)

Trev

I went down that track a few months ago, looking for a Windoze
compatible progam to replace Orcad SDT and Protel Autotrax, which I have
used for years.

Best seemed to me to be EZPC from Number One systems. At least the
schematic capture and PCB is integrated, and the drawing commands are
common between the SCH and PCB. The editing is not as good as Protel,
but its ok.
No you cant import Orcad files, but you can import Gerbers made by
Protel, and use them as templates to re-create PCBs.

I tried several other packages in the under AU$1000 class, but none were
anywhere near acceptable.

--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

 

[Adrian Jansen]

budgie wrote:

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:02:04 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:


I fully agree with keeping an old machine to run legacy programs. In
fact I have two, a 386 running DOS ( and 5 1/4 floppy ), and a 486
running Windoze 95, just to keep old stuff going. But the lack of
integration between PCB and schematic, plus the need to send customers
PDF prints of schematics and other documentation finally made me change
to EZPC. The pin limited versions are pretty cheap.


Are you talking pdf for prod or just for checking? I use a freebie pdf
converter that takes the postscript output from TraxPlot and creates absolutely
ideal pdfs for client review.

Yes I do that too, but doing it from both Orcad for schematics and
Protel for check plots etc, with the different setups needed for each
eventually led me to find a better way. Even though I have written
stuff which automates the process, its still a pain to have two entirely
different ( but very good ) DOS programs which wont talk to each other.

--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

 

[budgie]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:12:20 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:

budgie wrote:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:02:04 +1000, Adrian Jansen <adrian@qq.vv.net> wrote:


I fully agree with keeping an old machine to run legacy programs. In
fact I have two, a 386 running DOS ( and 5 1/4 floppy ), and a 486
running Windoze 95, just to keep old stuff going. But the lack of
integration between PCB and schematic, plus the need to send customers
PDF prints of schematics and other documentation finally made me change
to EZPC. The pin limited versions are pretty cheap.


Are you talking pdf for prod or just for checking? I use a freebie pdf
converter that takes the postscript output from TraxPlot and creates absolutely
ideal pdfs for client review.

Yes I do that too, but doing it from both Orcad for schematics and
Protel for check plots etc, with the different setups needed for each
eventually led me to find a better way. Even though I have written
stuff which automates the process, its still a pain to have two entirely
different ( but very good ) DOS programs which wont talk to each other.

I used to use Orcad SDT III for schematics, and also for some "lightweight"
general drawing work. But the limited export capability eventually got to me
and I haven't actually used it for quite a while. I have slowly made the
transition to Schematic for DOS, but still hand-place and hand-route in AutoTrax
so in my situation there's no dialogue between schematic and pcb.

All the above are under 98SE.

With the .pdf printouts, I use the TraxPlot postscript option, and then the PDF
converter is actioned under Windoze with point'shoot - fairly painless step.