A very, very long time ago, I bought the original DOS version of Easy-PC out of an ad in Ham Radio magazine. With all respect to the current product, that old DOS sucker was about the buggiest thing this side of Microsoft.
At any rate, the LAST board I laid out in the Easy-PC is about at the end of it's mercifully long (20 years or so) life but I need a few dozen more boards to match up with a few hundred dollars worth of metalwork so as not to waste metal. The PC board house that made the last run of boards told me that this was the end, that they couldn't set up for photo negatives any more.
The old DOS program will NOT run under Windoze, no how, no way, no sir. I've tried every trick I know of and it still jams on loadup (even AFTER I get it out of its original 5" floppy format). However, the trial version of Easy-PC 8 loads the old board just fine. The only problem is that it will give me a PRINT version only, no Gerbers. My current PC board house can only work from gerbers -- they put their camera into storage ten years or so ago.
The point being:
- Does anybody have a version of Easy-PC that gives gerbers/NC files and would be willing to do a quick import and export of files for me? I promise, no more requests if I can get this one job done.
- Failing that, does anybody have an old legal copy of Easy-PC that they would be willing to sell me for a reasonable price?
- Failing that, does anybody have a way of translating Easy-PC files to Protel/Traxmaker so that I can generate the gerbers myself? Traxmaker says "TraxMaker can import Protel Text PCB files directly, allowing you to use all or part of board designs produced in Protel's Advanced PCB2 and Advanced PCB3 products. Once in TraxMaker, these board designs can be modified and saved as a TraxMaker PCB file or a Protel Text PCB file."
Jim