Electronics Forum / CAD / May 2005

Recent system hardware repair involved installing a new
motherboard.(ECS KM400-M2).

When everything was back up and running, I discovered that LTSpice
schematic entry no longer displayed a cross-hair cursor, when 'drawing
wires', when the W98 2Ed OS is used.

Wires can be placed; you simply have to guess where the starting point
is, any time you begin a connection. There is no telling what other
bugs are present running this and other programs.

Other cross-hair cursors, used in other programs, can be seen (ie
ACAD12R4)

The same hardware displays this cursor running the same rev of LTSpice
in W2K SP4 OS. The old hardware had no trouble with this SW in either
OS. Changing colours and settings has no effect - default settings
will show the fault.

The new hardware has an on-board VGA adapter chip set (also known as
the KM400) that uses different drivers for W98 2Ed and W2K. These are
the VIA 4in1 drivers that have been hanging around in different
revisions since 1999. The two revs tried here were

a) ECSv451 DriverVer=12/23/2003, 4.14.10.0039 from the motherboard
installation CD rev 2.7. ECS website 'latest' drivers for this MB do
not include W98 drivers - they incorrectly label the W2K drivers as
W98, though they will not function in this OS. W98 and 'Millenium'
used the same drivers. NT, W2K and XP use the 'same' drivers. ECS is
not interested.

b) KM400-WinME-16012004-Rotation Driver Ver=04/07/2004, 4.14.10.0045
from the VIA website - last driver rev applied to W98 - OS now
unsupported. VIA is not reachable, although you can post notices in
their seldom-visited forums.

Does anyone out there run LTSpice GUIs problem-free in a W98 2Ed OS
with VIA 4in1 drivers? If so, can you please quote the revision ident
dates used?

The LTSpice SW package ( ~PSpiceR4 ) is available as SWCADIII or
SwitcherCad III from the Linear Technology website. This downloads and
installs simply.

To invoke the bug;

a) From the file menu, select 'new schematic'.
b) From the edit menu, select 'draw wire'.

Your cursor will become invisible only inside the schematic window.
The normal cursors will be visible in toolbars and elsewhere on the
'desktop', outside of the schematic window.

http://www.linear-tech.com/company/software.jsp

RL