PROTEL Autotrax XP video driver

These files are video drivers for the Protel Autotrax, Easytrax and dos schematic products. These video drivers only work with XP operating system

If you have a VESA bios equipped video card in your system, whether or not your system runs XP, we suggest you use as a first choice our VESA video drivers. The main shortcoming of the XP driver (compared with the VESA drivers) is that Autotrax, being a DOS application, does not redraw the screen when obscured by another application or minimized then restored. This means when you restore the Autotrax window it is Black until you press "End", or move, or zoom in and out, or do some other operation that cause Autotrax to specifically alter the screen. This is not actually a programming error on our part - it is just what happens when a DOS application is run in a window. XP normally runs these full screen.

When you are using Autotrax and autoXPDv, and you wish to use the mouse, you must right click in the window title bar and select "Hide Mouse Pointer". The mouse then becomes exclusive to autotrax - to get control of the mouse back to windows again you must either alt-tab away from Autotrax, or quit the application (Esc - F - Q - Y)

Basic Instructions to Install Autotrax and use these drivers:
• Copy file autoxpdv.drv and rename as GRAPH.DRV in autotrax directory
• Install file autoxpdv.dll in C:\windows\system32
• Make a .PIF shortcut (or other as appropriate) to traxedit
• Edit the Cmd line and working directory to match autotrax
• Select "Screen: Usage: Windowed"
• As you run the driver right click the title bar and enter "Hide Mouse Pointer"
• Ensure you exit autotrax normally, with "File Quit Yes"

• Full instructions included in the download - see autoxpdv.txt
• You can read the FAQ
• Background colour was broken - fixed in version 1 June 2009
• Problems, or works OK? Either way, email and tell us.

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/autoxpdv.html

I would like to give credit to Mark Smit of Canada, for his work on implementing DirectX primitives, which we use in this code, and also to Japheth of Germany, for his advice on implementing VDM calls in 16 bit code. We also have a webpage up describing just how we went about connecting the 16 bit application to the 32 bit DLL, if you are interested in the technical side of the task.

This page was last updated 01 February 2010