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- This might be a real silly proposal, but I want to write drivers for a digital tablet that no longer functions correctly, because of the drivers. The original company is out of business; another that took over the product line has beta drivers available but they don’t work. The new driver program installs new files and then re-installs the old files over them. I intercepted the new files and managed to copy them into their proper places and erase the old files in DOS mode, but it still don’t work. The tablet and pen do work as a generic 2-button pointing device, but they also should support an included multi-button programmable mouse, pen pressure-sensitivity, screen mapping and some other stuff that aren’t currently available. (the pen pressure-sensitivity is what I mostly am interested in) -They all did work originally, on the same computer/OS about 2 years ago, but not now. Now the tablet control panel only says “Wintab Support Incorrect Or Not Available” and only the tablet orientation options are available. What do I need to know? What language are drivers usualy written in? Do I need any info from the manufacturer, or can I get what info I need from the hardware and the improperly working drivers I have? - MC
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Drivers are usually written in C++ or some highly optimized language.
You can reverse-engineer a driver for anything, if you try hard enough. All you have to do is monitor the data output and see what data the tablet is sending. Then write a driver that converts this into the input that the OS expects.
Suffice to say, you do NOT want to do this. You can buy new graphics tablets for $50. What is your time worth?
Got a couple of questions first.
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What operating system are you currently using?
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What interface does the device use, USB, PS/2, Serial Port, etc.?
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Who made the device? What’s the model number?
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Do you still have the original driver disk that was included with the device?
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What have you tried so far to fix the problem? Did anything change after doing this?
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- Well, I am partly just curious: it’s not like I can’t afford another cheap tablet. The problem is, I can’t find any reputable company that offers a cheap, small tablet anymore. Watcom seems to have dropped theirs, all they have is the expensive stuff - so any new one I’d get would be suseptible to the same problem. It isn’t broken, I hardly ever used it, and I’ve turned up several requests across the net asking if anyone knows where to get functional drivers.
And I’m bored.
Anyway:
My OS is Win98 [critical updated 3 days ago], tablet is a CalComp Creation Station model #11050, on a serial port with a Y-connector for the mouse. The alleged drivers are available at (www)gtcocalcomp.com. They have the old ones that don’t work anymore, and betas that also don’t work either. I have not tried any of the Win2000 drivers yet.
- Well, I am partly just curious: it’s not like I can’t afford another cheap tablet. The problem is, I can’t find any reputable company that offers a cheap, small tablet anymore. Watcom seems to have dropped theirs, all they have is the expensive stuff - so any new one I’d get would be suseptible to the same problem. It isn’t broken, I hardly ever used it, and I’ve turned up several requests across the net asking if anyone knows where to get functional drivers.
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The (original, fully functional) control panel for the tablet is a multitabbed affair. All I get with the old drivers is a single “Config” tab, with the tablet orientation and a few other options: port location, loading as a mouse driver, FIFO buffer and notify when not detected. The new drivers leave the “Config” tab blank, and put all the regular stuff onto a second “Hotkeys” tab (it should also support hotkeys), but include nothing about any hotkeys. - The new help file lists 13 files installed. The new driver install program unloads what looks like more files than that, but I don’t know where they’re all going. I gave the new driver the install path of A: (to a blank floppy) so that I could remove it after the install had run, but afterwards the floppy was still blank (I did check in DOS mode). The default installation directory of either driver installer doesn’t contain all 13 files, only five. The others get put in \Windows\system or \root. When I tried the new installer on a floppy, it did seem to write stuff to the floppy but came back and erased it, I guess- ? During the old install, it also references a couple Windows dll’s that are outdated “…A file being copied is older than the one currently on your system…”, but I can’t find any outside reference to those files in the driver installer info. (It doesn’t matter if I keep the newer files or install the old ones, by the way. It doesn’t work just the same either way)
–One mistake I can see is that after I run the new driver install program, it asks about restarting the computer and if you say yes, upon startup the computer asks for the CD and then re-installs all the old files over again. By not restarting is how I managed to copy and install the new files myself. The new driver installer doesn’t say anything about giving a new -uh, INF(?) file, and if given the path to where the new installer was run, the computer finds no driver file there. The only file that it will recognize is the old one on the CD.
–All the old files are dated 1998, all the new ones that I can find are dated 1999. The help lists all the files installed. Two of those files that are placed in the system folder, ccwtup32.dll and ccwtup.exe, I can’t ever “catch” the new versions of- they are always dated 1998, even though the new help file says that it installs those files (although it doesn’t say if those files are new or not). - MC
The Microsoft Developer’s Network is the best source of information on writing drivers for windows OSes. It is what those of us who write device drivers for our products use. See http://www.msdn.com for more info. It is kinda expensive (about $500).
Most drivers these days are written in C or C++, a few old school ones are written in assembler. E-mail me if you want specific questions answered. I’ve written hundreds of Windows drivers.
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- The new driver installer is a self-extracting exe. Is there any way to extract it all without running it? - MC
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Norton Uninstall or similar could/would possibly do a system search and scrub out any associated drivers that are
preventing full implementation.
" The new driver installer is a self-extracting exe."
Just run Unzip on it, it should come out.
I think the drivers for the tablet are on the net but you just don’t know where to look. But you’d have to know the model nbr.
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- There are drivers on the net, but they don’t work. The site I gave (gtcocalcomp.com) was put up by the company that got the discontinued legacy products. They have the original old drivers (that used to work ~2 years ago, but don’t now) as well as new beta drivers that also don’t work.
~ The most annoyng thing is that it used to work perfectly. After I bought it, I remember going through all the features in the control panel to see what they did and all of them worked, but at the time I didn’t have a painting program that could use them. - MC
- There are drivers on the net, but they don’t work. The site I gave (gtcocalcomp.com) was put up by the company that got the discontinued legacy products. They have the original old drivers (that used to work ~2 years ago, but don’t now) as well as new beta drivers that also don’t work.
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There is more than one site other than (gtcocalcomp.com).
There are guys on the net that have what you have & have put in drivers for it that work. What is the model nbr again?
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- The model # is 11050. - There’s two pages asociated with the product that have drivers for download: one is interwld.com… and the other is gtcocalcomp.com… The two files for Win95/98 they offer are tw95nt61.exe which is the regular driver (that don’t work) and tw95nt70.exe which is the beta (that also doesn’t work). Every other page that I have turned up in searches for drivers so far is someone else asking for working drivers, or a download of one of these same files or a link back to one of the above pages.
I did find some place named vtablet that sells a driver program that’s supposed to support 350 different tablets (this one among them) but I tried the trial version and it didn’t work at all. I changed through all the possible configuration settings and the tablet did nothing on all of them. - MC
- The model # is 11050. - There’s two pages asociated with the product that have drivers for download: one is interwld.com… and the other is gtcocalcomp.com… The two files for Win95/98 they offer are tw95nt61.exe which is the regular driver (that don’t work) and tw95nt70.exe which is the beta (that also doesn’t work). Every other page that I have turned up in searches for drivers so far is someone else asking for working drivers, or a download of one of these same files or a link back to one of the above pages.
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Are you sure it works? Is the power supply putting out the voltage? I’d just buy a new one they are usually dirt cheap at like ebay.com Something like $10 last time I looked at them.
Also, when was the last time you installed your OS? Maybe there are residual files or registry entries that are screwing with it. Do a clean install on another machine and try to put the tablet there.
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- Last things first:
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- I got no other machine to try to install on.
- It doesn’t have any power supply; it connects onto a serial port and the mouse port, with a y-connector for the mouse. The pen is cordless and batteryless, and you can still tap and double tap on icons with it to substitute for clicking the mouse buttons. The pen also has two buttons on it that also still work as mouse buttons.
- I haven’t put any other new input devices on my system since then; I have replaced previously bought devices with identical units and gotten updated drivers for *those[/i, but I don’t know if that is what caused its malfunctioning or not. (the other devices are a joystick on a game controller port and another game controller on a USB) I didn’t have any programs to use the advanced features with except the tablet’s control panel, so I don’t know exactly when it stopped working.
- I think the driver is bad. I have already verified that even though the new driver installer contains all new files, it doesn’t replace two of them properly.
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—Anybody know (aproximately) where the drivers get the input, and where they send it (Win98/ PII) ? -And do windows drivers use consecutive addresses? - MC