[time-nuts] Lady Heather Serial receive Error 0x2

[Dave Baxter]

Hi.

In your LH shortcut, if you haven't already, you may want to make the
"Start in:" setting, to be the same folder path, as the .exe your
invoking with the shortcut.   That can often (depending on what other
files the .exe needs) make a big difference to performance and
stability.

Right click the shortcut, select properties, and it's the "Start in:"
parameter.   It makes a big difference if you are running Win16 programs
too.   They become much more stable!

If nothing else, it'll force windows to look in it's own folder first
for any needed resources, before searching the machines 'search path'
etc.   Of course, the app can specify the full path to the resource too
if needed.

When an app wants to load a DLL for example, if it is called by name
only, the first place the system looks, is in the same folder as the
calling app, then the windows system32/system folders, then the search
path.  (I cant remember if the DLL Cache is looked at before or after
the system folders.)

You can prove that with multiple DLL's of the same name in critical
places, that each do nothing other than popup a message dialog (each
message being unique to each DLL.)   Quite enlightening to do that sort
of thing at times, then you begin to understand "DLL Hell" if noting
else.

This certainly holds true for all versions of winderz up to and
including XP.


Re the FTDI serial <> USB adapters.  We use them here for all sorts of
comm's and hardware control stuff.  Never had an issue with them.  But
we did have to go to FTDI's site and get the latest drivers, as the ones
on the supplied CD were it seems known to be buggy.  (At that time, the
"Best" ones stability wise, were the "Unsigned" versions.)

We even use the DTR/RTS lines for interface power, control and
signaling!  They work well, unlike some lesser products.   There is at
least one "popular" make, where some of the driver API call's do nothing
but return with a good result code.  In particular, the flush buffer
call's!   (It took us a long time to figure that one out!)

So long as the caling program uses the documented Windows API call's for
serial port stuff (messy though it is) you can have ports from COM1 to
COM255 with 2000 & XP, and they work just fine.

Else, use a third party driver suite, such as Marshallsoft's WSC
collection.  Fast, stable and well documented.  It's worth the
expenditure.   They do versions for all the popular programming
languages, VB, C, Delphi etc.

One thing I have learnt to do with "new code" though, is watch it's
memory usage in Task Mangler (er, Manager) to make sure there is no
creaping excessive useage of ram as time goes by.   Not sure is that is
what's termed a "Memory Leak", but I've seen it sometimes with my own
code, as well as other peoples.    Even with good code, it often takes
an hour or so for things to "settle" and become stable, as far as those
figures in TM go.

I've little experience of Vista, and none of Win7, yet.   It'll be
"interesting" to see if the XP Virtual Machine in Windows 7 Pro', also
handles Win16 stuff OK.   Im not holding my breath for that.

Best Regards.

Dave B.


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:56:19 -0500
From: David Bengtson <david.bengtson at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather Serial receive Error 0x2
To: time-nuts at febo.com
Message-ID:
	<d74c9b050911161456n1ee20e8bj3cb664e2703415b3 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi All

I finally managed to get some time to figure this out. I was using a
usb-serial interface with the FTDI chipset, and I had to tweak two
parameters to get it working. First, I had to tell the driver that I
didn't have a serial mouse (Serial enumnerator checkbox) and the second
thing was to tweak the serial buffer. It was set to 4k, which was too
large. I changed that to 1k, and it's been running for ~ 20 hours
happily.

Dave

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:53 PM, David Bengtson
<david.bengtson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> I'm running what I believe to be the latest version of Lady Heather on

> a Windows XP laptop. I'm using a USB-Serial interface, and I'm getting

> this error after about 15 to 20 minutes of data taking. I haven't seen

> any recent discussion on this problem, I'm curious to know if anyone 
> else has seen this, and if they've figured it out. Once the error 
> message shows up, I quit out and restart the app, and it works fine.
> I'm starting it with a shortcut ?"C:\Program 
> Files\Heather\heather.exe" /7 to point it at the com7 serial porty.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Dave
>



------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:51:02 -0800
From: "John Miles" <jmiles at pop.net>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather Serial receive Error 0x2
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
	<time-nuts at febo.com>
Message-ID: <HMEBKHFEACMNLMHIAFDNKEPPCCAB.jmiles at pop.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

The upcoming 3.0 version will have much better serial code (i.e.,
Mark's, rather than mine) but yes, it may still be vulnerable to the
Windows serial-mouse lameness.  I'm not sure why the FIFO buffer size
should have mattered, though.  If any other information on that comes to
light, I'd be curious to hear about it.

-- john, KE5FX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]On
> Behalf Of David Bengtson
> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 2:56 PM
> To: time-nuts at febo.com
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather Serial receive Error 0x2
>
>
> Hi All
>
> I finally managed to get some time to figure this out. I was using a 
> usb-serial interface with the FTDI chipset, and I had to tweak two 
> parameters to get it working. First, I had to tell the driver that I 
> didn't have a serial mouse (Serial enumnerator checkbox) and the 
> second thing was to tweak the serial buffer. It was set to 4k, which 
> was too large. I changed that to 1k, and it's been running for ~ 20 
> hours happily.
>
> Dave
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:53 PM, David Bengtson 
> <david.bengtson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All:
> >
> > I'm running what I believe to be the latest version of Lady Heather 
> > on a Windows XP laptop. I'm using a USB-Serial interface, and I'm 
> > getting this error after about 15 to 20 minutes of data taking. I 
> > haven't seen any recent discussion on this problem, I'm curious to 
> > know if anyone else has seen this, and if they've figured it out. 
> > Once the error message shows up, I quit out and restart the app, and
it works fine.
> > I'm starting it with a shortcut ?"C:\Program 
> > Files\Heather\heather.exe" /7 to point it at the com7 serial porty.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> >
> > Dave
> >
>