Solved! calcomp drawing board 3 serial device

[herm0016]

i am trying to get a cal comp drawing board 3 working on a windows 10 machine. i have it showing up as a mouse, and the serial to usb is set up acording to the settings in the docs for the digitizer. in device manager it says error 10 device can not start. am thinking that different serial mouse drivers may work. several sources say that the old drivers for the device will not work, and you can do it as a serial mouse, which seems to make sense.

any help? anyone else use an old serial mouse device or digitizer? this one was never used, picked up for 10 bucks to see if we can make it work. i have an old laptop i may try to get going with xp pro on it, that is from around the time this was made. but having trouble with that as well.

 

[Steltek]

Try the 11.1.3.2 drivers from either of these sources? Tabletworks is supposedly the driver for it. It may be a subscription thing, though, based upon what I have read.

It also may not work as well as at the bottom of the 2nd link it explains that they gimped the driver as a result of a lawsuit settlement by Wacom & LCS/Telegraphics. The guy that won that lawsuit used to sell his own driver at www.vtablet.com but that website now appears to be dead.

Downloads - GTCO

www.gtcocalcomp.com

GTCO Corporation Drivers

GTCO wintad tabletworks Drivers for Vista, XP, Win2k

www.interworldna.com

 

[herm0016]

yep that one worked, with a little tweak to the serial adapter. one of the thing i read before i tried 11.1 said that it would not work with the drivers from calcomp and it would with some mouse drivers. very odd. anyway. thanks.

these things are pretty neat, the one we got is 24 x 36. looks like they still sell basically the same thing with a usb port. also appears that almost all of the non-wacom ones are made by the same company with several brands on them.

 

[Steltek]

Anytime, glad it worked out.

 

[mgmatis]

yep that one worked, with a little tweak to the serial adapter. one of the thing i read before i tried 11.1 said that it would not work with the drivers from calcomp and it would with some mouse drivers. very odd. anyway. thanks.

these things are pretty neat, the one we got is 24 x 36. looks like they still sell basically the same thing with a usb port. also appears that almost all of the non-wacom ones are made by the same company with several brands on them.

Hi,

I bought used calcomp drawing board 3. Can you please explaine or send how did you install board on win 10. I intent to use optitex 19 program.
Thanks for any help, best regards from Slovenia
matis.grafika@siol.net

 

[Steltek]

Hi,

I bought used calcomp drawing board 3. Can you please explaine or send how did you install board on win 10. I intent to use optitex 19 program.
Thanks for any help, best regards from Slovenia
matis.grafika@siol.net

Did you try to use the driver linked above from GTCO for the board? Once the board and its driver are installed, you should be able to set it up within the Optitex software you are using. I'd try to use the different Calcomp instructions shown here to see if one of them will work provided your board has a serial cable. If you don't have a serial port on your PC, you will want to buy a serial to USB adapter cable (if you have to order one off eBay, make sure they include any necessary drivers needed for Windows 10).

I'm not familiar with Optitrex, though, so I have no idea how you'd go about it if that doesn't work - you might want to look around for an Optitex support forum somewhere in that case or contact Optitex direct for assistance.

 

[Kris0999]

i am trying to get a cal comp drawing board 3 working on a windows 10 machine. i have it showing up as a mouse, and the serial to usb is set up acording to the settings in the docs for the digitizer. in device manager it says error 10 device can not start. am thinking that different serial mouse drivers may work. several sources say that the old drivers for the device will not work, and you can do it as a serial mouse, which seems to make sense.

any help? anyone else use an old serial mouse device or digitizer? this one was never used, picked up for 10 bucks to see if we can make it work. i have an old laptop i may try to get going with xp pro on it, that is from around the time this was made. but having trouble with that as well.

Just came across this. Have you found a way to get it working? I am looking to set it up with optitex.

 

[Steltek]

Just came across this. Have you found a way to get it working? I am looking to set it up with optitex.

As previously stated, I know nothing about the Optitex software, and that hasn't changed. They have instructions here for using it with a Calcomp Roll-up 3 and a Calcomp Drawing Board 6, so between the two of them you should probably be able to adapt them to setting up your Drawing Board 3 to work with the software.

Hardware wise, I presume you have all the hardware (cables and power adapter) that came with the Calcomp Drawing Board 3. This document gives basic hardware installation instructions -- make sure the mouse that came with the board has fresh batteries installed. The previously provided driver links for Tabletworks in the above posts are still active. They include Win10 compatible drivers in the most recent available ones from April 2017. Since you are not using it with Autocad, there hopefully won't be a subscription fee.

Presuming that you have all the cables that came with the Drawing Board 3, one would be a round 9 pin cable to 16 pin serial port adapter. You plug the round end into your Drawing Board 3, and the 16 pin serial adapter into a serial port on your PC.

Because most modern PCs no longer include a serial port, you will either need to use an older computer with a serial port, get a PCIe add-in serial port adapter card (presuming you have an expansion slot available for the card) to provide a serial port, or purchase a 16 pin serial port to USB adapter cable. If you go the adapter cable route, you need to make sure that the adapter cable (technically what you need is a RS232 DB9 female connector to USB A male connector cable) either has Win10 drivers or is directly supported by Win10. You would plug the serial end of the Drawing Board 3 cable into the DB9 female end of the USB adapter cable, then plug the USB adapter into your computer. Choose the solution most appropriate for the computer you will be using. You may also have to tweak the communication settings for the hardware serial port that shows up in Windows 10 control panel.

Once the chosen serial port solution is installed, you need to set it up in Optitex using these parameters.

Good luck.