I have the usual PFC/Datalogit/Techedge setup and it was working great until.....

My company upgraded my latptop to a Dell D600. It's great and all, but the problem is that now I can't "READ" or "WRITE" from the datalogit software through the box.

My friend's laptop still works fine on my car so I KNOW the problem isn't the cable/box/pfc. Something is up on my computer.

I am running the same COM port settings as he is and I have NO error messages in my device manager. I have tried all the COM ports but they all do the same thing... "Read All Error 76".

I have tried different combinations of turn on car, then fcedt, then read.... fcedit, car, etc... My box/pfc isn't picky at all... I NEVER used to have any problems with interface not responding errors.

I have tried the original version of fcedit as well as the newest 1.1.

Ideas?

 

What OS is the new Dell using and is it the same or different from your old one and/or your friend's laptop?

BTW I think the "INF" error is not the same as the "Read All Error 76" error.

 

My comp that doesn't work uses XP and my friend's computer uses the same install of XP.... so it's not an XP problem....

I want to cry! This laptop rocks, but it sucks that it doesn't work for FCEdit.

 

Have you tried a de-install, shut down, and reinstall, shut down, reinstall of 1.10, shut down and reboot of FC_Edit ? Probably not the problem but certainly will eliminate one possiblility (a corrupted file somewhere in the FC_Edit read routine).

 

I did try to deinstall then I even went to the trouble of going through the registry to find all the stuff that got missed by the uninstaller program....

My next step is to find a serial device to plug in there to see if the port even WORKS.

Brian

 

Well, I am out of ideas.....Good luck

 

Well I used Hyperterminal and a jumper on pin 2 and 3 on my 9 pin serial port which makes a loopback on it. When I type in a character, I get the same character back. So this is showing me that at some basic level at least the serial port is working.

boo hoo

 

Do you have to adjust the serial port speed? maybe 9600bps? or whatever the datalogit uses...
Also go to Compute Management -> Device Manager, look the the COM port, and make sure that an IRQ is dedicated to it.

 

I use an XP laptop with a real serial port and if I boot it up with the serial port plugged in the datalogit won't respond. I've found that it's most reliable when I boot the computer from cold (not wake it from a sleep or hybernation), then attach the serial port, Key on, Real All. Fire 'em up and read-all again just to make sure it's talking.

With 2000 & 98, and the older datalogit software it didn't used to be so particular.

 

I have tried it off a cold boot, plug in the serial, key on, read all.... doesn't work. Here's a question for ya... one of the guys on the FCEdit datalogit group asked about mscomm32.oca file ... does your XP computer have that file on it?

Brian

 

Nope, no .oca file. I believe the .oca file gets created when you use regsvr32 to register the .ocx. Here:

MS Support Link


For what it's worth though, the last few times I installed datalogit, I didn't use their install. I just dropped all of the files in a directory and fired it up. Strip.ocx works by virtue of being in the same directory, and I have never worried about mscomm32 stuff. But then this is a virgin XP install.

 

Hmm I'll try just shoving all the files in one directory.

I also have a little utility from sysinternals.com that I use sometimes on my Win2000 box to monitor file system access... maybe it works on XP and I can see if any files are not found or something.

 

Well here's the latest... I have given up and gone another route.

I plugged up a modem to COM1 and I had NO PROBLEMS AT ALL talking to the modem both via windows automatic configs and via Hyperterminal using modem commands. My COM port works.

But for some reason, FCEdit doesn't "like" it.

I went out and bought a USB-to-Serial adapter (around 25-30 bucks) and plugged it in. Win XP recognized it and within a minute I was back "online" with my PowerFC no problems.

I am a little annoyed that I had to spend 30 bucks to buy something when the built-in COM port should have worked.

Brian