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Micrografx PC-Draw 1.4

SystemSystem
edited April 6 in Product Comments
imageMicrografx PC-Draw 1.4

PC-Draw is a vector based drawing program for DOS. You can use it to make diagrams, schematics, charts, and drawings. It has optional support for plotters and light pens.

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Comments

  • GloriousCowGloriousCow
    Probably the best surviving example of software for the IBM PC that uses a light pen.

    If you have two disk drives, it will expect your data files (drawings, templates) to be on Drive B:. Load Disk 1 in A and Disk 2 in B and you should be good to go.

    It's an interesting program. The entire introduction/tutorial is a drawing, so a drawing can have interactive elements, multiple pages, etc.

    It also comes with some useful light pen test and calibration utilities - such software is pretty rare. 'PENSYS.COM' appears to be a driver, 'LPTEST.EXE' will test your pen, while 'PENCAL.EXE' will calibrate the screen offset parameter if the pen pointer is offset.

    Actually using the light pen to draw is not great. In high resolution CGA mode, there's only a horizontal accuracy of +- 16 pixels. You'll be forced to use the nudge controls for fine positioning, at which point you may wonder why you're not just using the keyboard.

    A light pen interface that added per-pixel resolution would have really been essential, but wasn't possible just using the light pen header of the CGA card.

    Still an interesting look into how this technology worked, so I appreciate whoever uploaded it.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Were you actually able to try it with a genuine light pen?

    I've been looking for a light pen for ages, never seen a genuine IBM/CGA one although I could probably build one or adapt one from another system.

    There were some third party ISA light pen adapter cards, that may have supported finer position selection.

    I suspect IBM's light pens were mainly intended for simple menu selection, like at a sales kiosk, so only text-level accuracy was required.
  • GloriousCowGloriousCow
    I've been developing light pen emulation in MartyPC. I would like to try this with a real pen at some point.

    I'm not sure IBM gave much thought to the light pen on the PC; they never developed their own light pen, and the 5151 monitor was not ideal for their use. But it was simple enough to connect a header to the MC6845's built in pen strobe line, so they did.

    They put in a bit more effort on the PCjr with the external pen connector and a BIOS light pen test routine, but it still has the same limitations.
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