Old Protel for sale?

[alanbc]

OK, so don't laugh before you've read it all.

I'm a hobbyist, a pretty serious one, and a LONG time user of OrCAD for DOS, going back 30 years or more, with literally hundreds of designs on my computer.  It's old, but it works, I know it, I'm good at it and I'm comfortable with it.  Most designs are simple these days, resulting in single layer PCBs I route on my T-Tech PCB milling machine.  There was one project though, that required a 6 layer board!

For PCB design, I use Protel Traxedit for DOS, which I actually purchased decades ago, and before that, Protel EasyTrax, which I also purchased, in both cases, just weeks before Protel released them for free.  I even purchased Protel Traxmaker, a truly dreadful port of Traxedit, again, just weeks before it was free.

Like OrCAD, Traxedit for DOS is old, but it works, it never crashes, I KNOW it, and I'm good at it.  That 6 layer board was produced in Traxedit and ended up in Search And Rescue helicopters!

I have no desire to change from OrCAD.

But I do, from time to time, kick around the idea of a new PCB program.  Traxedit is certainly suboptimal for surface mount devices, it's hard to use on my nice big monitor, and it DOES NOT DO metric worth a darn; it thinks in inches and does a low resolution divide by 25.4 when you ask for metric.

Being retired and just a hobbyist, free or darned cheap are the only options.  Over time, I've looked at all the usual suspects, downloading, installing, sitting through the tutorials and so forth, for product after product.  The one I eventually settled on just recently was DipTrace.  It's free, for guys like me, and just a fabulous program, full of features I had never ever considered. 

It's amazing, really.

But it's also SERIOUS overkill for what I do now.  Just running through the 300 page tutorial takes so long that by the time I'm done, I've forgotten the first pages and have to start all over again. 

I DID, somewhere along the way, buy a copy of Protel for Windows 2.8 (the fourth wad of cash I sent to Australia), but I have a love hate relationship with it.  I love the fact that it works very much like Traxedit for DOS; the keystrokes and indeed the "Zen" is the same.  It thinks in enough decimal places that metric is fine.  It's pretty good on my nice big screen .. except that menu items are TINY.  They were probably fine on a 1024x768 screen; 2600x2000 .. not so much.  Mostly though, it crashes.  Not often, but often enough that I just don't trust it and so I never use it.

Which is really annoying, because if it didn't crash, I'd think it close to perfect.

Now, I have HEARD from many sources that the later versions of Protel for Windows .. 99 is it, or 99 SE or something like that .. the last versions before Altium bought them .. are very good.  Stable and reliable.

But they are of course no longer for sale.

So I come here, to this forum.

Does anyone know where I can still buy a copy of this old old software?  I don't think Protel or Altium ever released it for free.  I don't want a hacked or cracked copy .. I'm not a thief .. I want a legitimate copy.

Or failing that, does anyone have a genuine copy squirreled away somewhere that they never use and are willing to sell?

Again, legitimate only.  I believe that theft of intellectual property is in fact a crime, even if I am into Protel for a couple of thousand pre-Y2K dollars overall.

Thanks!

[peter-h]

Protel PCB 2.8 (1995, patched) is easy The only issues with it are

- crap autorouting (use old Specctra; also "available" )
- DRC sometimes fails to correctly evaluate conductivity of split planes (fixed by putting a track in here and there)
- spurious DRC errors on some designs e.g. pads and fills overlapping

I have no idea whether 99 fixes any of the above.

Protel 99 is also doable - see other threads here from a few years ago. I've got it but not had a reason to use it.

I doubt you will find unopened packages of these, after 25-30 years. Anyway, they were dongled, and the dongles probably won't run under win7 or higher. Only de-dongled versions run. In general there are "old software" sites so you can pick up e.g. Office 2007. But you can also get all this on Ebay; I buy Orifice 2007 for each PC I build.

I paid £ 1500+ for Protel 2.8

[voltsandjolts]

The one I eventually settled on just recently was DipTrace.  It's free, for guys like me, and just a fabulous program, full of features I had never ever considered. 

It's amazing, really.

But it's also SERIOUS overkill for what I do now.  Just running through the 300 page tutorial takes so long that by the time I'm done, I've forgotten the first pages and have to start all over again.

You like DipTrace, as do many others, so use that and be happy. You don't have to know all it's features.

[alanbc]

Protel PCB 2.8 (1995, patched) is easy The only issues with it are
- crap autorouting (use old Specctra; also "available" )

Thankfully, my design needs these days are so simple that auto-routing is no longer a requirement.  And DRC shortcomings are something I can live with.

I wonder if the Protel 2.8 patches can still be found ...

Thanks for the reply.

[alanbc]

I paid £ 1500+ for Protel 2.8

Wow.  I paid a bundle for my copy, but nowhere near that much.  Mind you, I did whine a bit about the three other purchases that were free within months .. maybe they took pity on me.

[alanbc]

You like DipTrace, as do many others, so use that and be happy. You don't have to know all it's features.

Yeah, that might be the plan, if I can't find the patches for my ancient Protel.

But I guess I'm getting old .. I'm finding it hard to commit the time to learning Diptrace. 

(When you're my age, every hour counts, especially when you no longer think about the years you have left, you just hope you make it to Christmas!)

My most recent project was a SIMPLE one .. an ESP32 module, a few passives and a few connectors.  The ESP32 module was not in the Diptrace schematic library nor was there a PCB footprint.  12 hours in, still no layout, so back to the old stuff.  No OrCAD library part nor Traxedit footprint either, but an hour after starting with the old stuff, I was soldering a PCB.

Hard to devote the time.

Thanks for the thought though, you might be right .. just bite the bullet Alan ...

[joeqsmith]

OK, so don't laugh before you've read it all.

...

Does anyone know where I can still buy a copy of this old old software?  I don't think Protel or Altium ever released it for free.  I don't want a hacked or cracked copy .. I'm not a thief .. I want a legitimate copy.

Or failing that, does anyone have a genuine copy squirreled away somewhere that they never use and are willing to sell?

Again, legitimate only.  I believe that theft of intellectual property is in fact a crime, even if I am into Protel for a couple of thousand pre-Y2K dollars overall.

Thanks!

I don't think you can legitimately transfer the license today.     

As far as patches, let me have a look to see what I have.

[abeyer]

I don't think you can legitimately transfer the license today.     

This.

Anything you do that you don't already own a license for yourself is likely going to be against the letter of the law. And from a purely moral/ethical perspective, it's kind of a wash for Altium as they wouldn't get any money out of it either way.

[joeqsmith]

I have 3.4.2, 5.0.11  and 6.6.7.   I do not seem to have any patch files for these. 

[sideshow bob]

No need to fork over money. Altium made that tool public domain eons ago
https://airborn.com.au/layout/autotrax.html#Installling_Autotrax
Edit try this link it is from Altium so no stealing. But really you can not steal anything that is in the public domain
https://www.altium.com/documentation/other_installers#p-cad search for autotrax

[sideshow bob]

Actually Protel 99 and its medicine still works under windows 11. I had a problem where I needed to take some very old P-CAD designs and transfer them to Altium. I tried import in a lot of Protel, DXP and Altium versions. No bueno at all. I had to download a P-CAD version for dos (version 8.5) run it under dosbox and export it as PDIF. When download P-CAD version 2006 import it there and save it. So import in Altium. I was paid less than I deserved for that job   

[xavier60]

For the last few years of using Protel 98 PCB, I had added rudimentary mouse-controlled pan and zoom by using X-Mouse Button Control to convert mouse input into keystrokes. Made it much easier to use and I still would be except for the Gerber bug.
I eventually moved to Kicad.

[peter-h]

I wonder if the Protel 2.8 patches can still be found ...

Found this:

This was once Protel's best PCB program, with very few bugs, and much better than
their notorious version 3.

Typically of Protel, the startup screen says it is v2.5 but the Help-->About box
says correctly that is in fact v2.8.


Protel for Windows v2.x Dongle Crack.
=====================================

    Basically there is a loop which initialises the array of modules
    which are enabled before testing the dongle.  Normally it sets them
    all to 0 (they are disabled) but changing the initialisation
    value to 1 instantly enables all modules without access codes or
    a dongle.


Search String:


    8B BE 7E FF

    C6 85 2E AA 00   << CHANGE 00 TO 01

    83 BE 7E FF 15


Apply this crack after installing PFW but before running it.

[tooki]

….the last versions before Altium bought them ..

FYI, Altium did not buy Protel. It is Protel: Protel simply rebranded as Altium in 2001.

Here in Switzerland, if you buy Altium today, the invoice comes from “Protel AG” (AG = Inc), their Swiss legal subsidiary, which they never bothered to rename.

[peter-h]

Some years ago I was getting calls from Altium here in the UK, pressing me for what software I was using for electronic design. I told them... Protel 2.8, Orcad SDT/386, all from the 1990s. The salesman did not believe me and kept pressing. For some reason he thought I was using a bootleg copy of his £20,000 package!

I said no way would I touch anything with a floating license with a 20ft bargepole. He then said you can get around the long term issue (Altium stopping their license server) by making my own server, because the license is tied to the ETH card MAC #. And as a backup, if I used an ETH card with a programmable MAC I could have a backup license server.

Anyway the price was silly. Years before that a customer paid me some £10-20k for XILINX FPGA software (XACT5 and Viewlogic 4 LCA, which eventually I managed to get de-dongled, which was obviously essential for long term projects) but I stopped doing that work c. 2000.

The salesman dropped to 10k and then in the same phone call dropped to 6k. I still didn't buy it. In fact it would not even import PCB 2.8 designs.

[temperance]

If you want free but capable software, you can try Kicad.

[peter-h]

AFAICT Kicad does not import Protel PCB files. Not much does; Protel SE99 is the closest.

[temperance]

Kicad does not import Protel PCB files.

That was not a requirement in the original question and follow-up by alanbc.

Importing very old design files is nearly impossible. That's why I like Kicad. Just like you would do with compilers, you can save a copy of Kicad together with the project without licences expiring and other problems (like parallel port dongles) at no cost other than a little storage space.

[peter-h]

The OP was looking for a wrapped unused Protel 99SE package. Good luck finding that And wasn't 99SE dongled anyway?

Best you will get is a cracked (de-dongled, even if you have a dongle you do not want to try to run it in some VM) PCB 2.8, or similarly 99SE. If you search EEVBLOG for 99SE etc you will find it. I actually have 99SE too, and have done some quick tests, but have not bothered with it because I have ~30 years of work on 2.8 and SDT/386, and 99SE works quite differently, with its stupid client/server model.

[5U4GB]

Anyway, they were dongled, and the dongles probably won't run under win7 or higher. Only de-dongled versions run.

If those are the parallel-port ones that were widely used in the 1990s then they're pretty easy to bypass.  I used to do some work for a company that shipped a dongled product and it caused so many problems that they sent out a software update (on floppy disk) that patched out the dongle check.  I don't think it made much difference in terms of piracy but it sure cut down on support calls.

[peter-h]

Yes; they usually contained a counter or some such. So some people built replicas.

Patching the .exe is also only for old software because new stuff has a signature on it. Not sure how that works now.

Some old software is actually very hard to patch. I have one ancient program, maybe 20 years old, no longer supported, which uses keylib32.dll which is very complex; it takes a snapshot of the machine, RAM size, CPU, etc. About 20 parameters. And if > 10 of them change, it forces you to contact the (no longer existent) vendor to give you a new key The DLL is encrypted and it decrypts itself to RAM where it executes. I think this issue is a lot bigger than most people think, because you discover it only when the machine packs up and has to be rebuilt.

I am also not sure about dongles in a VM. That is sure to give you lots of fun

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

Anyway the price was silly. Years before that a customer paid me some £10-20k for XILINX FPGA software (XACT5 and Viewlogic 4 LCA, which eventually I managed to get de-dongled, which was obviously essential for long term projects) but I stopped doing that work c. 2000.

Yes, the XACT dongle was easy, really an insult to people who were
likely to have a logic analyzer.

It was nothing more than a binary counter on the lpt1: port, and depending
on when paper_empty toggled at 250, 251 or 252 pulses they could see
the options you had bought. (entry only, compilation, silos simulator).
We had entire stacks of Compaq-286s all running on the same problem
overnight in the hope that we had at least one working XC3020 in the next morning.

Methinks I still have an original, scheduled for recycling really soon now.

Gerhard

[free_electron]

Even though you may find the install media the problem is the activation key. Protel/Altium never used a dongle. But there is a user key ( 4 characters - 4 characters  abcd-efgh)  That is bound to the user. Depending on what you purchased that key authenticates against their server and generates the license file. What you paid for is stored under that user key.

The user key is not transferrable and is also geographically bound ! the license fee is different for single site ( within 50 miles of the buyers address) , continental , or world.
Without a user key you can't generate the license file.

I know that during things like corporate buy-outs where one company buys another and stuff has to be moved over, there is a mechanism to get the existing licenses transferred but it typically is done by creating a new user key , moving the licenses to the new key and sunsetting the old key. If the office building address changes they typically create new key, new licenses and credit the unused time. There may be a one-time fee due to geographical changes.

And before people start harping on about those procedures : that's how all big software licensing works. Try getting a Dassault Systems or Siemens or IBM tool moved... it's even more complex.

Now that i think of it.. Protel 99SE uses a key similar to windows. there is no server authentication... That came with DXP i believe. I still have my 99SE install set somewhere. (as well as protel for windows 3.11) I did every version from Autotrax 1.61 onwards, including on-premise servers.

[peter-h]

Protel PCB 2.8 used a dongle. I still have it. But (see above) it is easy to patch it out. SE99 I can't remember; I only ever had a "special" version

[free_electron]

Autotrax for dos initially used a Sentinel dongle. They later removed that.

Protel for windows 3.11 i don't remember if that had a dongle. i have the installation CD but can't remember if there was a dongle. Protel 95 and later used keys similar to windows. But those registration keys were already tied to a "user key" (4-4 format).
Lots of programs used those Sentinel keys back in the day. Altera Max+ , Quartus, and many others.