07/01/04

Instructions for Installing CircuitTutor on your PC

Dr. Burks Oakley, Professor of Electical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois and author of CircuitTutor, confirms that we can freely use and distribute CircuitTutor. He and I both hope you will find it useful.

To begin installation of CircuitTutor:

  1. Create a new directory c:\ctinst on your hard drive.

  2. Download the zip file ctutor.zip (4.977 MB) into the directory c:\ctinst.

    With Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can download the file by right-clicking on its link and then selecting the Save Target As... item from the resulting pop-up menu.

  3. Download and install an unzipping program, if you don't have one. WinZip is popular.

  4. Unzip the file ctutor.zip into the directory c:\ctinst.

  5. Open, read, and follow the directions in the file readme.doc located in the directory c:\ctinst. For Windows XP, follow the instructions for Windows 2000.

  6. Delete the directory c:\ctinst, and all the files within it, which you no longer need.

The nice installation program for CircuiTutor above, by far the most convenient one available for CircuitTutor, was prepared by people at Virginia Commonwealth University.

An Alternative Approach

For unexplained reasons, the installation based on ctutor.zip does not work in every case. If it does not, delete the directory c:\ctinst and try the following, longer, procedure.

  1. Create a new directory c:\ctinst on your hard drive.
  2. Download the following 4 zipped files into that newly created directory. With Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can download each file by right-clicking on its link and then selecting the Save Target As... item from the resulting pop-up menu.

    disk1.zip; 1.35 Mb
    disk2.zip; 1.32 Mb
    disk3.zip; 1.34 Mb
    disk4.zip; 1.21 Mb

    Each of these files is small enough to fit on a 3.5 inch floppy disk, although you'll skip the floppies and download them into the directory c:\ctinst on your hard disk. Nevertheless, we'll refer to them as disk1.zip and so forth.

  3. Download and install an unzipping program, if you don't have one. WinZip is popular.

  4. Unzip the zipped disks. Unzip the file disk1.zip first. Repeat the same, in turn, for disk2.zip, disk3.zip, and disk4.zip. Afterward, you should have 40 files in the installation directory, including the 4 zip files.

  5. Run the Installation Program c:\ctinst\install.exe. At the prompt, select all of the software components (SHIFT-click each item) to install CircuitTutor in its entirety. The installation program then installs the CircuitTutor files in a new directory, c:\CKTUTOR.

You must carry out some addtional steps to complete the alternative installation. Check the \system subdirectory in your Windows directory to see if it already contains a file SOUND.DRV. If it does not, then copy the file SOUND.DRV to the \system subdirectory in your Windows directory from the installation directory (c:\ctinst). If the \system subdirectory in your Windows directory already contains a file named SOUND.DRV, it is not necessary to replace it.

Next step: from the c:\CKTUTOR directory, (not the c:\ctinst folder) copy the Oakley font (OAKLEY.FON,) to the \fonts subdirectory in your Windows directory. Then, reboot your PC.

Once the system is rebooted you should find the complete CircuitTutor available and ready for use. You may now delete the c:\ctinst temporary directory.

Installing OrCAD PSpice® on your PC

Some of the homework assignments require you to use OrCAD PSpice®, powerful simulation software for circuits used by engineers in industry. The professional version of this software costs several thousands of dollars per copy. Fortunately, the book PSpice for Basic Circuit Analysis that accompanies our text Fundamentals of Electric Circuits includes a copy of the OrCAD PSpice 9.2 Demo installation CD at no extra cost. This demonstration version provides all the functionality of the professional version, but only for smaller circuits. Note that you may not use PSpice Student version 9.1 in this course: this older version uses a schematic capture program, Schematics, that OrCAD no longer supports. Beginning with version 9.2, the only schematic capture program that OrCAD supports is Capture.

You can download the latest version, 10.0, of OrCAD Demo Software directly from the OrCAD 10.0 Demo Software site. The installation file is 174 MB, however, so downloading it takes some time, even with a high speed connection to the Internet.