mscomm times out when it shouldn't

[emcdan61]

I have a vfp6 application running on our shop floor to catalog nc programs. This program has been in use for several years.

Over the last 6mos there have been intermittant problems with an older workstation (w95). It "thinks" no more data is being sent via the rs232 and times out as appropriate for a "no more data" condition. The screwy thing is that we may only have recieved a portion of the text dump sent from the NC. This does not happen on the two other workstations of more recent vintage. Also, I can run Hyperterminal (on the offending pc) and download the entire program with out incident.

Any thoughts as to what might cause such strange behaviour?

TIA
Dan

 

[DEDMOD]

Have you tried the obvious things like defragging your hard drive, making sure you have plenty of space, making sure someone, or some program, hasn't changed something like the timeout setting? Also swapping your cables and/or cards might help, though if it's really intermittant it might take a while to know if something helped or not.

Dave Dardinger

 

[emcdan61]

Obvious things like defragging, etc!? Well, no. <g>

Yes, ample disk is there. The timeout setting is buried in the ole properties and the users can't get to it. I did try swapping ports 1 and 2 but the results are the same. I can download 10-15 programs consecutively, before it breaks (sometimes more/less). Rebooting fixes it sometimes~

 

[DEDMOD]

I don't know. I'd expect a hardware problem if there's no logjam on hard drives. I mentioned defragging simply because fragged files can sometimes slow things down just enough to cause a timeout somewhere. At any rate, is there some reason this computer needs to remain Win95? I've found Win98 more stable and Win2000 even more so. why not upgrade and add some memory while you're at it?

Dave Dardinger