Anybody still using Protel PCB 2.8?

[peter-h]

This is a great package, 1995 vintage, which I still use, under windows XP (doesn't work under win7-64).

It does all I need and has almost no bugs. It takes netlists from Orcad SDT/386 which also works great under XP, using the GDI drivers.

Was there ever a successor which retains the functionality without introducing massive bloat?

Protel got taken over by various companies afterwards. They did a PCB v3 but from what I saw it was full of bugs and barely usable. It had Orcad SDT schematic import but the result was rubbish, with components moved around etc.

The PCB 2.8 I have, GBP 1500 at the time, is a legit copy. It was dongled originally.

I had the Altium salesman on the phone a while ago, pushing a GBP 20k product. I told him we still use PCB 2.8 so don't need it. He dropped the price to 10k and later to 5k. But I know that program would take me a year to learn and probably still is full of bugs. They also run the floating license locking system where if the license server breaks you can't use the program anymore. There was some way to build a duplicate license server for that case, by cloning the MAC of the server's ethernet card, but it is still a hassle.

[HighVoltage]

I still have my copy of Protel PCB 2.x (Not sure which version was my last one) somewhere in a box, but have not used it in 15+ years.

IIRC, the dongle was on a parallel port, did you add the parallel port to your XP machine or did you bypass the dongle?

It will probably run on a Win7 with a virtual XP running inside the Win 7 OS.

[peter-h]

The dongle was bypassed. It is a simple patch of the .exe. This was necessary on all the software of that era, as the vendors vanished.

I still have the parallel printer ports, but that isn't the problem.

For example I used to do Xilinx FPGA design (X3000 mainly) and there were two dongles - one for Viewlogic/LCA and one for XACT. Both eventually failed (they broke) and Xilinx wanted ~$20k for the later tools. I stopped doing that work in the late 1990s anyway. Too much hassle, with newer tools not importing older designs. The Xilinx sales guy just said you have to crack some eggs to make an omelette So you had to archive the old tools, the old computer and the dongles

Yes; Protel PCB 2.8 does run nicely under VMware, winXP VM. I had some trouble with the mouse functionality; there is an obscure config in the VMware mouse properties which fixed it.

It's a good Q whether Protel ever did a more recent (but largely bug-free) PCB package which imported the v2.8 PCB files.

[jmarkwolf]

That's the version I started using along about 1996, been using Protel/Altium products ever since.

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

[Warhawk]

You can make Protel 99SE running in Windows 7, maybe also in W8 and 10. You can find more information here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/free-trial-of-protel-99se/
and here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/software-tools/51279-loading-library-file-protel-99-a-3.html

I tested it some time ago and it worked. 

[capt bullshot]

I still have a copy of Protel 98 around, some half year ago I installed it on a Win7 PC. No dongle, just a serial number to enter, it just worked. I had to view an old project, didn't do any serious work on it, but rememered pretty quick all the keyboard shortcuts. I really liked them back then, left hand at the keyboard, right hand at the mouse all the time, very efficient to use. And it could import older (2.8 or whatever) projects.

[EEVblog]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

[Circlotron]

I would like to get a copy of 99SE so I don't have to do stuff on work's computer. PM me if you have one available.

[Circlotron]

Tons are probably still using it.

If that's the case, maybe there should be a forum sub section for 99SE instead of  getting lumped in with Altium Designer stuff?

[capt bullshot]

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

So why should they want to switch - the new Altium designer costs a wealth of money and has a steep learning curve. IMO Protel 98 / 99SE was very efficient to use once you got used to it and provided everything you need for your job to be done, no support required - so I don't see a reason to switch. Protel was simply to good for this world :-)

[DrGeoff]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

Still use it. On Win 10.

[jmarkwolf]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

Still use it. On Win 10.

How so?

[DrGeoff]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

Still use it. On Win 10.

How so?

It just works when run under compatibility mode for WinXPsp3.
Still have all my libraries developed over the last 15 years or so. Never had a problem with it.

[Warhawk]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

Still use it. On Win 10.

How so?

I sent you two links how to make it running few posts ago 

[EEVblog]

So why should they want to switch - the new Altium designer costs a wealth of money and has a steep learning curve. IMO Protel 98 / 99SE was very efficient to use once you got used to it and provided everything you need for your job to be done, no support required - so I don't see a reason to switch.

Bingo, that's what everyone thought, and why it was so hard to get people to switch. They took a look at Altium Designer and didn't see much added value, and also saw all the silly direction they were headed with FPGA's, making the PCB optional extra, the Summer/Winter confusion etc and customers just rolled their eyes and went back to 99SE. It was an industry standard for 10-15 years which is quite amazing.

[mairo]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

To switch from 99SE to the current Altium, one pretty much needs to buy the full price software (which people should be able to bargain down to 50%-70% of the advertised price), so as others have said already, not too much added value, but I think if Altium offers those users the switch at just the price of the yearly subscription (+ maybe a free online training course) , some people may do the switch.

[DrGeoff]

Still have a warm spot in my heart for Protel 99SE. Would still be using that if it ran under current O.S.'s.

When I was working at Altium circa 2011 half of China and countless others were still using the 12 year old 99SE.
The sales people would always complain how it was to convince people to switch. Tons are probably still using it.

To switch from 99SE to the current Altium, one pretty much needs to buy the full price software (which people should be able to bargain down to 50%-70% of the advertised price), so as others have said already, not too much added value, but I think if Altium offers those users the switch at just the price of the yearly subscription (+ maybe a free online training course) , some people may do the switch.

Pay more to do the same. No thanks.

[peter-h]

How well did 99SE import the v2.8 .pcb files an libraries?

[capt bullshot]

How well did 99SE import the v2.8 .pcb files an libraries?

I don't remember details, and I don't remember any particular problems, so I think it was OK and usable.

[jmarkwolf]

How well did 99SE import the v2.8 .pcb files an libraries?

I don't remember details, and I don't remember any particular problems, so I think it was OK and usable.

Same here.

[snoopy]

So why should they want to switch - the new Altium designer costs a wealth of money and has a steep learning curve. IMO Protel 98 / 99SE was very efficient to use once you got used to it and provided everything you need for your job to be done, no support required - so I don't see a reason to switch.

Bingo, that's what everyone thought, and why it was so hard to get people to switch. They took a look at Altium Designer and didn't see much added value, and also saw all the silly direction they were headed with FPGA's, making the PCB optional extra, the Summer/Winter confusion etc and customers just rolled their eyes and went back to 99SE. It was an industry standard for 10-15 years which is quite amazing.

Not only that Altium got so desperate, they made an ad targeting existing users of Protel 99SE and why they should upgrade to Altium by bagging the crap out of their own 99SE product to get their point across

The trouble is they made 99SE to well and more than adequate for 90% of pcb jobs so I am not surprised there are still a lot of people still using it

[jmelson]

This is a great package, 1995 vintage, which I still use, under windows XP (doesn't work under win7-64).

It does all I need and has almost no bugs. It takes netlists from Orcad SDT/386 which also works great under XP, using the GDI drivers.

Was there ever a successor which retains the functionality without introducing massive bloat?

Protel 95 and Protel 98 were horrible!  Protel 99 showed promise.  Protel 99SE with SP6 was really good.  There are about 5, maybe, bugs there, but it is pretty easy to avoid them.  Most important to me, is that the schematic checks have only one bug (if you have the same pin number twice on a component, it fouls up the net generation and rules checks.)  Other than that, the number of goofs it detects in multi-page schematics seems to be 100%.  And, the DRC on the PCB seems to be 100%.  I've done 200+ boards with it so far, up to 6 layer.  If the board doesn't work, the schematic is just wrong, and no EDA tool can fix that!

If you can get a copy of Protel 99SE with SP6, I think you will find it is an extension/improvement over Protel schematic and PCB, with much the same flavor.  it does have editable shortcuts and menu selections, which I have customized a bit.  I no longer remember the areas that got improved/extended, but they seemed to be good and logical places to add features, not stupid fluff.  I know that I asked for a number of these.

For history, Accel was the US distributor of the Protel products.  Accel was getting pressure to add stuff, and rewrote the basic functionality of Protel's product in (I think, C) and pushed it out.  That was Protel 95, so totally unusable it was a VERY bad joke.  They had to backpedal rapidly, and eventually Protel bought them out and brought their more well-reasoned software development strategy to bear.  Not sure if Protel 98 was also Accel's C-language effort, or was migrated to Delphi.  Protel 99 was in Delphi, but was a relatively new program, and needed to get the bugs out, that was the 99SE version.  (I think I've got this history mostly right...)

Anyway, Protel doesn't want to give away their old Protel99 program, as it will do 90+% of what Altium Designer will do.

I still run P99SE, using VirtualBox on a Linux host.  Your choice of Win 2K, XP or 7.

Jon

[b_force]

So why should they want to switch - the new Altium designer costs a wealth of money and has a steep learning curve. IMO Protel 98 / 99SE was very efficient to use once you got used to it and provided everything you need for your job to be done, no support required - so I don't see a reason to switch.

Bingo, that's what everyone thought, and why it was so hard to get people to switch. They took a look at Altium Designer and didn't see much added value, and also saw all the silly direction they were headed with FPGA's, making the PCB optional extra, the Summer/Winter confusion etc and customers just rolled their eyes and went back to 99SE. It was an industry standard for 10-15 years which is quite amazing.

I can also totally agree with this.
It happens to often that companies just totally destroy a winning team. Most of them go all overboard all of a sudden.
I never understood why they had to make all kinds of new additions and extra's, except for a decent 3D design (which is not even mandatory in many cases)

BTW, diptrace seems heavily modeled around the older Protel versions, really feels similar.

[DerekG]

BTW, diptrace seems heavily modeled around the older Protel versions, really feels similar.

The reason for this is because a dozen or so Altium users (& several PCAD users) believe that Protel was in many respects a better PCB design platform than Altium Designer. They have been working hard with the DipTrace Design Team to implement the better features of both Protel & AD into the later releases of DipTrace.

DipTrace 3.0 offered so much more than the old Protel product whilst still retaining the easy-to-learn & easy-to-use user interface.

And DipTrace 3.2 was released just yesterday

I only use Altium Designer now when re-working legacy boards.

DipTrace 3.3 will have a push & shove router .......... another feature that can be ticked off the Altium wish list.

[b_force]

Interesting. I wasn't really satisfied with the older version of diptrace, but the new version seems to work pretty good actually.
Hopefully the makers are reading along, because I am missing some almost mayor issues like keyboard shortcuts (like mirroring) and as well as the ability to change a whole range of values/footprints (which is a must have with big boards).

How good is the PADS import feature with older PADS boards? If that works smoothless it's really a win for us. Because a lot of designs are still in the old PADS format.

[DerekG]

Interesting. I wasn't really satisfied with the older version of diptrace, but the new version seems to work pretty good actually.
Hopefully the makers are reading along, because I am missing ....... like keyboard shortcuts

DipTrace 3.0 introduced user configurable keyboard shortcuts. I have configured many of the keyboard shortcuts to replicate those of Altium Designer.

as well as the ability to change a whole range of values/footprints (which is a must have with big boards).

There are lots of options here too in DipTrace. You can update the library component & choose to then update all footprints to match the new library component, or you can change just the pads on a specific component on the board in just a couple of clicks ............ or highlight say half a dozen components (they may be the same or all different) & choose to update all or just some of the pad dimensions or just the hole size or both.

A very nice feature that even AD does not currently offer is the ability to change from metric to imperial (or vice versa) with just a single keyboard shortcut of your choice ........... even when you have multiple pop up windows open (ie you have the pad's parameters dialog box open & want to cycle through from imperial to metric).

How good is the PADS import feature with older PADS boards? If that works smoothless it's really a win for us. Because a lot of designs are still in the old PADS format.

I import & export to/from Altium via the PCAD filter with good success (the only thing that screws up a bit is the silk screen overlay).

I do not use PADS so I can't advise .......... however you can download a fully functional DipTrace ver 3.2 & try it for 30 days for free ..... so why not give it a try yourself.

[peter-h]

Where can one find 99SE SP6?

[capt bullshot]

Don't know if Altium still sells it, I'd guess no for obvious reasons. A simple backup of the installation CD files won't be very useful because you'd need the license key. AFAIR, the older version Protel keys don't work on 99SE.
Searching the net for "Protel 99SE full" brings up various warez and serialz sites, usually nasty, dangerous and useless, but there might come up somewhere a useable and non-infected version, but that's your own risk.

That's quite interesting: Everybodys favourite darling search the net engine brings up a short notice with a link to a "technical unit for luminous flux" database listing a lot of URLs pointing to sites that claim to offer "free" versions of whatever software. It's up to the reader to decide wheter using this information is compliant to local legislation.

[adx]

I still fire up 2.8 every so often. It was the last (best) Windows version before the silly client / server stuff was brought in (DXP, Altium etc). 98 was the first useful version of that client / server naffness that worked ok IMO. I paid for the naffness, but was effectively stuck on 2.8 for years until they sorted themselves out.

I was originally irritated by 99 and its DDB naffness (but that has its handy sides). But same problem, I upgraded to whatever the 2006 version was but despite being on that bandwagon I effectively didn't use Altium until about 2013. It's like flushing money down the toilet, the flip side is 99SE worked and was very popular and I got work. I use 99SE all the time - about half my clients still use it, though that number is dropping, and it's rarely used for the big boards these days, so in reality it has fallen behind (mostly used for pumping out small revision updates). 99SE does import 2.8 very well, but I think Altium imports 2.8 fine as well.

I'm kind of stuck on AD13 now, due to our last government bringing in rules which restrict companies where an owner has a relative with a disability from making capex purchases, and significantly more evil stuff like that (but that's the way the whole world seems to be going). At least it's a fairly good version too.

[peter-h]

99SE does run under win7-64.

It also imports PCB 2.8 .pcb files fine but with some issues e.g. any pad reliefs to an internal plane are lost. On a quick test, the learning curve appears to be substantial

[Circlotron]

99SE does run under win7-64.

There is an issue with it not recognising schematic library files though.

[peter-h]

That's interesting.

Can you indicate the specific issues?

One reason for moving to 99SE would be to avoid having to run a VM as I currently do, for PCB 2.8 and SDT/386. Replacing PCB 2.8 with 99SE does only half the job.

One has to import schematics and one has to import component libraries. All that has to work, and of course 99SE was not written by Orcad and AFAIK the SDT file format was never documented (although plenty of outfits reverse engineered it).

And even Orcad's windows versions didn't import schematics correctly, ending up with loads of labels moved around.

[Circlotron]

Several years since I battled with is but from memory the program complained that library files where corrupt when they were not.

https://www.google.com.au/search?ei=nlrHWq3BCsnb8QX4vY_ABA&q=protel+99se+windows+7+library+problem&oq=protel+99se+windows+7+library&gs_l=psy-ab.3.0.0i22i30k1.15974.18426.0.20298.9.2.1.6.7.0.226.424.0j1j1.2.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.9.476...33i21k1j33i160k1.0.cVSKa38VgAU

[peter-h]

I did fix the issue with the Help function not working under win7. I have not found a way to fix the "cannot run macro" error however. Not major issues however.

The fix for library loading is interesting. 99SE corrupts the filename before it opens the file

[DerekG]

I presume you can still run Windows XP under Win 7 to get on top of any problems like these.

[peter-h]

Yes, in a VM, but in a VM I can run PCB 2.8 and SDT/386 and they both work

The one thing which 99SE seems to do a lot better is autorouting. The 2.8 routing feature is useless.

99SE has various improvements e.g. panning works as it should.