Calcomp Drawing Slate 2 ~ Barrow Photograph

Calcomp Drawing Slate 2

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Hattori Hanzo Scribbler - Standard Member

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Does anybody here own such a thing and has tried using it under Windows 7 or has any hints to whether it works?
From what I get from their site it should work although it's not explicitly supported, so I'm hoping for some first hand experience.
Stan S. Scribbler - Standard Member

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I own one of the Drawing Board II (12x18). You know that it uses a very old fashioned 25 pin serial port (though you can get adapters to convert it down to a PS2 or a 9 pin comm port ) and the pen uses 6, size 13 batteries like they were candy.....
I don't have win 7 on a computer with compatible ports around. I think we last used it on NT, XP was problematic and Graphires were much better and had no additional battery costs.

Wanna buy mine? I think they had 125 levels of pressure and could be configured for upto 1,000 lpi, as well as recognizing tilt.
Hattori Hanzo Scribbler - Standard Member

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Afaik the Drawing Board is slightly different, although idk about technical details. If it features pressure sensitivity and the wireless pen, though, it should be of similar age. 1000/1016 lpi also sounds like the same generation.
I know that stuff is from the stoneage. But it basically does nothing else than modern tablets and even the serial connection is essentially the same that Penabled devices use.
And I have a neat little DIY project in mind...

And yes, I'd be interested. 12x18 is the size I'm looking for. The question is what shipping to Germany would cost.
I guess you also have the corresponding power brick, but do you maybe have a wired pen, too?

How was battery life with wireless pen, btw?
thatcomicsguy Pen Pro - Senior Member Senior Member

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I wouldn't bother, if I were you.
I owned an 8" x 10" version of the same device, and while it worked, it wasn't as responsive as any Wacom tool. The cursor had a drifty-dreamy quality which I found irritating. When I bought a new Graphire, it was a HUGE improvement.

Also, you'll be feeding the thing watch batteries like corn meal to pigs. (Well, that's a bit of an over-statement, but it sure felt that way. I found I needed to replace the twin batteries about four or five times per year with irregular use.)

Calcomp served me well enough through a lot of projects, but I am very glad I retired it.

Why not just use an old Wacom board for your project?
Stan S. Scribbler - Standard Member

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I just pulled the user manual and the unit. It's the model 33120, with a 12x12 active area on a 14.6x16" body. I found the 4 button wireless mouse/puck with the cross hair, the serial 25 pin comm as well as the 25 to 9 pin adapter, and a compatible power supply. The brick is 2.1mm monoplug DC with positive outside, 12-17v DC and 200 mA. I'm fairly sure I have it's wireless pen around here somewhere in a box, I just have to have a reason to find it.
The wireless pen battery life as I said is dreadful, seemed it was changed monthly as I recall. And it uses 6 #13 hearing aid batteries. The old compatible battery numbers are Duracell D393.

assuming I can make a box that's it's almost the exact size and 3" in height, it's about $50 USD for 6-10 day shipping. Shame it doesn't fit into a standard flat rate box would be $30. Now, how much is it worth it to you above that? Cost on the order of $500 at the time... without the cables they're in the $50's on eBay...
Hattori Hanzo Scribbler - Standard Member

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@ thatcomicsguy
I'm actually not planning to keep the pen wireless if it sucks down batteries like mint drops. One set of batteries per year, meh, but changing them in bi-monthly intervals would be a pita.

The reason I'm considering that stuff is the price. Even old Wacom boards go for a small fortune here if they're big and I just want some cheap DIY fun. The chances for this to get suspended after some days for several months or being abandoned completely are too high to justify spending actual money
In addition Calcomp has datasheets available that detail the specifics of the data format and such, so in the worst case I can just make them work by force. I've not seen that for Wacom and pulling that information e.g. out of open source drivers is no fun.

@ Stan

Thanks a lot for looking through your stuff
But 12x12 is the wrong format for me. I actually grabbed two Summasketch digitizers off ebay in this size two days ago, too. They were both one item and I won for 1.50€.

The shipping cost alone would be way more than I'd be willing to pay, to be honest. I'm currently looking at a Drawing Slate II 12x18 auction that will likely end below the equivalent of $30, shipping included.

But your comment about the wireless pen makes me sigh. Seems I'll either have to just use a wired pen or make a wireless one wired.
thatcomicsguy Pen Pro - Senior Member Senior Member

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Oooh. Data sheets provided by Calcomp do raise the sweetness value considerably! Sounds like your project is a little more involved than simply putting a screen over top a digitizing slate. And sure, a little microphone wire or something similar to carry a few volts DC to the stylus would solve battery thing easily enough.
I was thinking of offering to play "buying agent" on your behalf for some kind of Wacom board and then ship it to Germany. I'd be happy to do that, so long as I don't end up out of pocket in the end. If something affordable came up in Canada, then there's no customs charge on my end, and I can ship to you as a gift, so you'd get no taxes on your end either. But it sounds like your budget might be too small even for a bit of North American Wacom, plus you already found that Slate for $30, which is a pretty great deal even if it is from the stone age.

But keep the buying agent offer in mind if it ever looks like it might be useful to you.

Cheers!
Hattori Hanzo Scribbler - Standard Member

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The Drawing Slate II did not happen. For some reason some lunatics crawled out of some den and it ended at above 30€. I've seen them for ~10 bucks too often and I don't need to be hasty.
Also, another Summasketch III in 12x18 popped up already
For the pen I got the idea of ripping out the battery holder and putting in a gold cap. Even one with 0.2F should last an hour in the pen I found in my stash, which uses 4 cells looking like AG13. A diode for safety and a small ~20 Ohm resistor should make this chargeable in some seconds. A charging station could be easily made with a piece of wood.
Just a hole marginally thicker than the pen, some metal plate on the ground and a metal ring a bit higher would be sufficient contacts. The pen would get two holes on the cap where a wire leads round just a bit more than once and the top of the pen gets another two holes exposing a wire.
So however you put the pen into the holder, it gets charged by standing on one contact and leaning against the other.
Would be wireless AND I wouldn't have to care about batteries anymore!
Hmm, these days such a trivial idea should net me at least eight patents...

The real advantage of Calcomp's excessive documentation of the data format comes into play if I feel the need to do fancy stuff. One thing would be adding USB in a plug and play fashion. E.g. the cheap Waltop tablets work plug and play on Vista and Windows 7, even with pressure sensitivity. I would just need a Teensy and some simple USB stack to copy their behavior.
This might sound a bit weird comparing to just writing a driver, but 64 bit Win7 wants signed drivers and driver signing certificates are expensive. And installing a driver is less plug and play than just using a built in one, especially on foreign systems without administrative rights to install one.

But well, that's a bit of pipe dreaming atm, as the first set of two hasn't even arrived yet.

@ thatcomicsguy

I say thanks a damn lot for your offer
If you'd have to go through the hassle of buying, potentially returning or disputing, packing, shipping and all that, be sure I'd add a handling premium to the plain costs of the auction and shipping unasked.

My budget is actually mostly limited because I'm consciously greedy. I could easily spend twice my savings or any sum a normal man could make in ten years for some DIY ideas, so I better limit myself. Before I changed to the IT/informatics stuff I was passionate in tinkering with cars. Not in the "make it look badass" way or by putting turbo chargers on everything, though. I e.g added 500W of electrical heating to the ventilation because even with the pre-heating it took me too long until the windshield was defrosted when I couldn't schedule driving somewhere ahead. Some time later the steering wheel was also heated. After Mercedes introduced their keyless S series I wanted the same and some time later the power windows were closing automatically (with added obstruction detection) when the car locked, which also put off the audio system. For aerodynamic optimization the grill was closed by solenoids if the engine wasn't too warm and almost all openings that could make wind noise were taken care of in some ways. When I saw BMW advertise the grill thing for one of their efficiency tuned models some years ago I had a damn good laugh.
You can imagine how easily you can burn your money with such ideas, and for some reason all my hobbies end like that if I'm not careful