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PROTEL Autotrax/Easytrax video drivers
The only original protel video driver that will otherwise work reliably on modern hardware is VGA640.DRV
These drivers, to atleast 1024x768, have also been run under XP,
win2k, OS2 and dosemu 1.02.0 on suse8.1 kernel 2.4.19 and debian.
However, under XP you really do need a graphics card - just about all "on board"
graphics solutions do not have VESA support, so you will be reduced to using
autotrax with a resolution of just 640x480. The 640x480 is the standard driver
supplied with autotrax (vga640) and seems to work with just about any system.
This driver is hereby released into the public domain, and you can do what you like with it with no obligation. It was written by Steve Murray of AirBorn, and is open source. These drivers may well be updated, check back on this webpage, periodically, for new versions: www.airborn.com.au/layout/easytrax.html If when first trying this driver your monitor makes an unusual
noise, or the picture is badly distorted EXIT THE PROTEL PROGRAM -
or turn off your monitor, - we don't want you to blow a fuse
or anything! The key sequence for exiting Dos Protel is [Esc]
[Esc ] [F] [Q] [Y] - write this down, obviously you won't be
able to read this when you are trying the driver!
I would appreciate feedback
when you use these drivers - If you have problems with one of these drivers, the first thing to do is to try one with lower resolution. The next thing to try - and I would suggest doing this even if the driver seems to work perfectly - is to get the latest version of VESA driver for your video card. These are usually available from the video card manufacturers web site (try a Google search). Some of the weirdest problems have been fixed by updating
the video card driver - for instance garbage left after screen redraw
would seem very much like a hardware problem, yet two users
have had this fixed by downloading a new manufacturers vesa
video driver. Sometimes problems are fixed by changing system
About half of all users seem to have significant problems running under XP and the probable reason seems to be that the path environment variable is longer than about 56/66 characters. Detail here for info on this problem. Getting the VESA drivers working on XP laptops can also be problematic, even when they do claim to have VESA support. On one laptop, I found that the driver would come alive by: Run autotrax (but see just black), alt-tab back to windows, click twice on the Autotrax tab in the start bar, then press Function-F2. Beats me as to why this works - Function-F2 was normally used to swop to external video. There have been a few installs where computers have not correctly redrawn the screen after Alt-Tab switching. If the suggestions above don't sort out the problems, try the modeforce drivers VnnnnMDF.DRV - but try the VESAnnnn.DRV drivers first, as the modeforce drivers have a distinct performance penalty. Sorry to tell you about all the problems first, with this advice, 95% of installs should work first time. Links to other Autotrax material
Recently an English company (run by Ilija Kovacevic) has started using the Autotrax name - his package is not compatible with Protel Autotrax. Source code for these drivers (X86 assembler) GRDRVSRC.ZIP 
This page was last updated 01 February 2010 |
These files are video drivers for the Protel
Autotrax, Easytrax and dos schematic products. These video drivers
only work with VESA BIOS video cards - most name brand
video cards have this - although you may just have to download the updated
VESA DRIVER from your video card manufacturer. If you have a newer
system that does not support Vesa, but runs XP, you might consider trialing
our new 
and tell us.
settings - but its pretty rare, only "run full screen" seems to really matter.
I have found on some systems that the screen refresh rate is much faster
(less flicker) if I am using a driver with the same resolution as my
windows screen settings.
- makes SMD layout easier