Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Squarewave]

So, over the weekend, two scopes came my way, an HP54602B and a Philips PM3217.

HP working fine. Philips will need a power supply cap and possibly the rest of the axial caps inside it too.

I think I spent £40 total this weekend at the radio rallies and came away with the above plus a radio, a power supply and a small mag loop antenna.

[Zoli]

A little bit of teasing

[Black Phoenix]

Oh, I see you have been lurking for 2 years on the forum and this is your very first post ! ... to help me out, thank you very much !! 

OK... so it's not Orcad anymore then, the original product / SW is gone and now it's just a rebranded cut down version of Allegro.

I just did the sensible thing and clicked on the " About OrCAD " page on their site... why didn't I think of doing that sooner....

https://www.orcad.com/about/orcad-history

The entire history of OrCAD is there to see.

So looks like "Allegro" is the product name for the PCB suite made by a company named " Cadence Design Systems "... which acquired OrCAD in 1999, then in 2005 Allegro "light" replaced the original OrCAD code base. So from that point on, OrCAD was no more, only the name survived.

Well you learn a little something every day...

I wonder if Google could find me the old MS-DOS version I was using at school in 1996/97.... could be fun to play with it on my vintage computer, would bring back some memories.... I am a bit nostalgic I must admit !

Vince here - https://archive.org/details/1988-1996-orcad-100-701

I didn't test it so I don't know if it is installations or just page images (I'm on the mobile currently).

[TERRA Operative]

A little bit of teasing

Ooh, nixie stuff!

[Ice-Tea]

You know how you're always looking for a probe but can't find one?

[tggzzz]

Oh, I see you have been lurking for 2 years on the forum and this is your very first post ! ... to help me out, thank you very much !! 

OK... so it's not Orcad anymore then, the original product / SW is gone and now it's just a rebranded cut down version of Allegro.

I just did the sensible thing and clicked on the " About OrCAD " page on their site... why didn't I think of doing that sooner....

https://www.orcad.com/about/orcad-history

The entire history of OrCAD is there to see.

So looks like "Allegro" is the product name for the PCB suite made by a company named " Cadence Design Systems "... which acquired OrCAD in 1999, then in 2005 Allegro "light" replaced the original OrCAD code base. So from that point on, OrCAD was no more, only the name survived.

Well you learn a little something every day...

I wonder if Google could find me the old MS-DOS version I was using at school in 1996/97.... could be fun to play with it on my vintage computer, would bring back some memories.... I am a bit nostalgic I must admit !

Vince here - https://archive.org/details/1988-1996-orcad-100-701

I didn't test it so I don't know if it is installations or just page images (I'm on the mobile currently).

The MSDOS version was remarkably usable, given that it was keyboard based. I showed it to someone using Mental Graphics CAD; until he saw it he refused to believe you didn't need a mouse.

IIRC a hardware parallel port dongle was required. I hope my recollection is faulty.

[pcprogrammer]

I wonder if Google could find me the old MS-DOS version I was using at school in 1996/97.... could be fun to play with it on my vintage computer, would bring back some memories.... I am a bit nostalgic I must admit !

Vince here - https://archive.org/details/1988-1996-orcad-100-701

By the looks of it just image files. There is a torrent file, but no idea what that will give you. And don't forget that the official releases are protected with a dongle. You would need a cracked version.

I do have the floppies mentioning V1.21, V4.40 and V4.42, and could extract the data from them, but need to fire up some old system for it. Not sure if it will still work though. Long time since I used floppies. And then still it would be the official version that needs the dongle. And for as far as I can remember it is not a simple one like Xilinx used for early version of XACT.

Edit: I was wrong, there are 7Z files with the software for download and they are uploaded by a forum member "Beta_vulgaris" He also uploaded XACT software, which was written about in the FPGA section. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/looking-for-xilinx-foundation-2-1i-3-1i-software/

[srb1954]

The MSDOS version was remarkably usable, given that it was keyboard based. I showed it to someone using Mental Graphics CAD; until he saw it he refused to believe you didn't need a mouse.

IIRC a hardware parallel port dongle was required. I hope my recollection is faulty.

I once ordered ORCAD for some FPGA work and expected to get the MS-DOS version. Instead they supplied the first Windows version as they were discontinuing the MS-DOS version. The salesman said I was very lucky to get the Windows version at no extra cost.

Not. The Windows version turned out to be a complete turd. It was so buggy you had to save your work every 5 mins to avoid losing everything. You also had to reboot Windows every half hour to recover the memory that was lost to huge memory leaks.

Eventually, after wasting a lot time and accomplishing very little, I had to abandon the project due to the complete uselessness of the Windows version of ORCAD.

[Black Phoenix]

The MSDOS version was remarkably usable, given that it was keyboard based. I showed it to someone using Mental Graphics CAD; until he saw it he refused to believe you didn't need a mouse.

IIRC a hardware parallel port dongle was required. I hope my recollection is faulty.

If it was like the old Cubase app, you just need a special DLL as read only on the system 32 folder and it runs...

[xrunner]

You know how you're always looking for a probe but can't find one?

Yea - and now I know where they all are! 

[capt bullshot]

Oh, I see you have been lurking for 2 years on the forum and this is your very first post ! ... to help me out, thank you very much !! 

OK... so it's not Orcad anymore then, the original product / SW is gone and now it's just a rebranded cut down version of Allegro.

I just did the sensible thing and clicked on the " About OrCAD " page on their site... why didn't I think of doing that sooner....

https://www.orcad.com/about/orcad-history

The entire history of OrCAD is there to see.

So looks like "Allegro" is the product name for the PCB suite made by a company named " Cadence Design Systems "... which acquired OrCAD in 1999, then in 2005 Allegro "light" replaced the original OrCAD code base. So from that point on, OrCAD was no more, only the name survived.

Well you learn a little something every day...

I wonder if Google could find me the old MS-DOS version I was using at school in 1996/97.... could be fun to play with it on my vintage computer, would bring back some memories.... I am a bit nostalgic I must admit !

Vince here - https://archive.org/details/1988-1996-orcad-100-701

I didn't test it so I don't know if it is installations or just page images (I'm on the mobile currently).

The MSDOS version was remarkably usable, given that it was keyboard based. I showed it to someone using Mental Graphics CAD; until he saw it he refused to believe you didn't need a mouse.

IIRC a hardware parallel port dongle was required. I hope my recollection is faulty.

The very first electronics CAD I've used ran on MSDOS, too. It required a special graphics card with a thing called "Graphics Processor" back then, and that special "Graphics Processor" was heavily used to accelerate the graphics part of the UI, like HW panning and zooming, primitives (lines, rectangle, flood fill) drawing. Then you had to use a very expensive CRT monitor (back then) that could display 1024x768 pixels and was connected through a bunch of 75Ohm BNC cables to said card. It did graphics only on this screen. For menus etc. you had a second screen, like a monochrome text only Hercules card. It required a very special type of serial mouse to work at all, since all the driver stuff was hard coded within the CAD software. Once you were used to the UI, one could get along quite efficiently. It was called "MicroCAD" IIRC, later bought by some other company and there was even a windows version that didn't need any special HW anymore, but somewhen it just faded away AFAIK.

[Vince]

Registered today and very first post here on TEA... Welcome aboard LaulauBard !! 

Look people, a 100% fresh new Frog on board, lucky you ! 

Fresh frog blood for you..... that means I can now go retire, after 18 months of service here. Was fun being here, see you !

Nah, think I will stick around for a little longer, sorry.... 

[Vince]

OrCAD


Thanks all for your replies, got a lot more than I bargained for ! 

I don't remember needed a dongle to get it to work (we definitely had a dongle on Protel Win3.1 though, that I can remember) on the laptop I was using it with IIRC, which was supplied by me.

So the school had a cracked version then... guess I need to find that as well then.... or crack it with that DLL, if I can find it and know what to do with it. Not an IT guru here....

I guess I can Google "How to crack Orcad MSDOS ", might get some results...

@PCProgrammer : lovely that OEM box with the floppies and all ! Want ! 

If just out of curiosity, would be fun to reverse engineer the dongle, maybe we can copy it ?
Can it be opened non-destructively do you think ?
Maybe there is a programmable device inside that contains some code/key, but maybe we can identify the chip and read its contents and copy it 
Or just "sniff" the activity on the  // port to see what's going on, and reproduce that...

Could be a fun little project in its own right ! 

[pcprogrammer]

I guess I can Google "How to crack Orcad MSDOS ", might get some results...

Already did that but no luck.

@PCProgrammer : lovely that OEM box with the floppies and all ! Want ! 

Bought it way back when I started my own company, but have not used it that much. Did work with it a lot in the job before and it did need the dongle for sure.

If just out of curiosity, would be fun to reverse engineer the dongle, maybe we can copy it ?
Can it be opened non-destructively do you think ?
Maybe there is a programmable device inside that contains some code/key, but maybe we can identify the chip and read its contents and copy it 
Or just "sniff" the activity on the  // port to see what's going on, and reproduce that...

Could be a fun little project in its own right ! 

For what I recall of it, there is some encryption chip in it. When I worked at STEIM in Amsterdam, there was a guy who looked into it and he made a cracked version of the software, but don't know how he did it. Might be that I still have it on a hard disk somewhere

The versioning is also a bit odd, because the dongle says OrCAD/STD/3 and the disks say V1.21aH, but there is also a disk with V4.42. It is to far back to recall what is what and why

Opening the dongle is not a simple click, but the seams give way a little bit. Will see if it is willing to pop open with some tools.

[Zoli]

OrCAD


Thanks all for your replies, got a lot more than I bargained for ! 

I don't remember needed a dongle to get it to work (we definitely had a dongle on Protel Win3.1 though, that I can remember) on the laptop I was using it with IIRC, which was supplied by me.

So the school had a cracked version then... guess I need to find that as well then.... or crack it with that DLL, if I can find it and know what to do with it. Not an IT guru here....

I guess I can Google "How to crack Orcad MSDOS ", might get some results...

@PCProgrammer : lovely that OEM box with the floppies and all ! Want ! 

If just out of curiosity, would be fun to reverse engineer the dongle, maybe we can copy it ?
Can it be opened non-destructively do you think ?
Maybe there is a programmable device inside that contains some code/key, but maybe we can identify the chip and read its contents and copy it 
Or just "sniff" the activity on the  // port to see what's going on, and reproduce that...

Could be a fun little project in its own right ! 

May I direct you to one of my recent postings:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/locating-teltone-telephone-line-simulator-configuration-software/msg4377928/#msg4377928
Since the knowledge keeps fading away...

[Black Phoenix]

Opening the dongle is not a simple click, but the seams give way a little bit. Will see if it is willing to pop open with some tools.

Normally it should be easy to open and check the contents. It is not like a RSA SecurID that is rendered inoperable after opening, it wasn't that advanced back in the 90s.

[Vince]

For what I recall of it, there is some encryption chip in it.

Oh no !! Boy that's a lot more involved / fancy / sophisticatd than I anticipated for such an old device !

When I worked at STEIM in Amsterdam, there was a guy who looked into it and he made a cracked version of the software, but don't know how he did it. Might be that I still have it on a hard disk somewhere

Wow so it can be done ! Yeah do keep in touch, crossing fingers you can find that cracked version somewhere ! 

The versioning is also a bit odd, because the dongle says OrCAD/STD/3 and the disks say V1.21aH, but there is also a disk with V4.42. It is to far back to recall what is what and why

I think it's quite simple.... like most S/W "suites", it's not monolithic, it's a patchwork of various components, that are developed independently, from a source code perspective, so they each have their own version number. Then the "suite", the uimbrella collecting all the various component, the "high-level"  layer that gets sold to the customer, has a version number of its own as well.

So here the red disk v4.42 is the version of the overall "ORCAD" S/W suite, then V4.40 is the version of "ESP3, the IDE, then V1.21aH as we can see on the labels, is the version of the "SDT" schematic capture tool.
So, in short.... this set of disks is  "ORCAD" version 4.4 

I would think that's what it should say on the cover page of the main manual and box, if you still have the cover for it.

Opening the dongle is not a simple click, but the seams give way a little bit. Will see if it is willing to pop open with some tools.

Give it a try and report with pics, of course ! 

[Vince]

OrCAD


Thanks all for your replies, got a lot more than I bargained for ! 

I don't remember needed a dongle to get it to work (we definitely had a dongle on Protel Win3.1 though, that I can remember) on the laptop I was using it with IIRC, which was supplied by me.

So the school had a cracked version then... guess I need to find that as well then.... or crack it with that DLL, if I can find it and know what to do with it. Not an IT guru here....

I guess I can Google "How to crack Orcad MSDOS ", might get some results...

@PCProgrammer : lovely that OEM box with the floppies and all ! Want ! 

If just out of curiosity, would be fun to reverse engineer the dongle, maybe we can copy it ?
Can it be opened non-destructively do you think ?
Maybe there is a programmable device inside that contains some code/key, but maybe we can identify the chip and read its contents and copy it 
Or just "sniff" the activity on the  // port to see what's going on, and reproduce that...

Could be a fun little project in its own right ! 

May I direct you to one of my recent postings:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/locating-teltone-telephone-line-simulator-configuration-software/msg4377928/#msg4377928
Since the knowledge keeps fading away...

I am not sure I understand ! 

Thrad talks about tyelephone emulator S/W ... your post, I think, gives a couple archive files for a dis-assembler for windows executables ?
Not sure how that would help here ? 

Still I thought it could be fun to try that program out, so I downloaded the two parts of the archives, .RAR.ZIP files, but sadly my Linux box / Ubuntu fails to work with them. Second archive, it fails to open it altogether: " an error occurred while loading the file ". First archive it can open it and shows that there is one file inside it, called " ASC0.COM ". but when I try to extract that file, error again, won't work.

I tried....

[Zoli]

...
I am not sure I understand ! 

Thrad talks about tyelephone emulator S/W ... your post, I think, gives a couple archive files for a dis-assembler for windows executables ?
Not sure how that would help here ? 

Still I though it could be fun to try that program so I downloaded the two parts of the archives, .RAR.ZIP files, but sadly my Lnux box / Ubuntu fails to work with them. Second archives, it fails to open it altogether: " an error occurred while loading the file . First archive it can open it and shows that there is one file inside it, called " ASC0.COM ". but when I try to extract that file, erorr again, won't work.

I tried....

The posted files are .rar volumes, the .zip extension added for forum compatibility. As I've stated in that post, is a website rip, which was dedicated to software reverse engineering; even has a dedicated subsection on the hardware dongles. Mail sent with .zip only.

[pcprogrammer]

Normally it should be easy to open and check the contents. It is not like a RSA SecurID that is rendered inoperable after opening, it wasn't that advanced back in the 90s.

Had to sit out a thunder storm that was not forecasted but came anyway, and then all things get unplugged.

Indeed the dongle is only held together by friction of four pins. With a thin blade it was easy to pry open

Nothing sophisticated at all, but what this chip is Did not search for it though.

[pcprogrammer]

Wow so it can be done ! Yeah do keep in touch, crossing fingers you can find that cracked version somewhere ! 

I will see if I can fire up a system that has my old HDD in it and try to run the versions I have on it. Maybe there is the cracked version too.

I think it's quite simple.... like most S/W "suites", it's not monolithic, it's a patchwork of various components, that are developed independently, from a source code perspective, so they each have their own version number. Then the "suite", the uimbrella collecting all the various component, the "high-level"  layer that gets sold to the customer, has a version number of its own as well.

So here the red disk v4.42 is the version of the overall "ORCAD" S/W suite, then V4.40 is the version of "ESP3, the IDE, then V1.21aH as we can see on the labels, is the version of the "SDT" schematic capture tool.
So, in short.... this set of disks is  "ORCAD" version 4.4 

I would think that's what it should say on the cover page of the main manual and box, if you still have the cover for it.

Nope the box only says V1.21 and OrCad / STD / 3 and the manuals say OrCad 386+. On the copy of the HDD I have on this machine I named a directory ORCAD322, so maybe it is that one? Or it might be that I have never installed it on that machine. Memory is a bit vague on it

Give it a try and report with pics, of course ! 

See above

Edit: Some feel this is off topic here, so I created a thread in the vintage computing section. We can continue it there if wanted or needed: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/orcad-for-msdos/new/#new

[pcprogrammer]

But the closet had another surprise I forgot I had.

A Xilinx parallel port based bit stream loader cable and a test board with a XC2064 on it

[DC1MC]

In the memory of dearly departed (from the thread/forum  ), how about this unconventional TEA, does it need some greasing and rubber parts replacement:

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/mr-and-mrs-pac-man-flipper-bally-von-1982/2195810429-168-5383

Cheers,
DC1MC

[BU508A]

Nothing sophisticated at all, but what this chip is Did not search for it though.

https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/CAT702_103090_00203

But one needs a login for downloading the datasheet.

[DC1MC]

Nothing sophisticated at all, but what this chip is Did not search for it though.

https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/CAT702_103090_00203

But one needs a login for downloading the datasheet.

I have a login there, there is no data-sheet, it's a trap