You know, Bob, when you talked me thru this problem, several
months ago, with vs 9.something, I kind of remember that you
figured out that some little file was missing. we added it from
another copy I had on my desktop, and all was wonderful until I
had to get cute and download the latest version. Of course, now I
have no other copies anywhere, so I guess that's a moot point.
Geez, I'll bet you're sorry you ever got started with this. (VBG)
Actually, I'm more embarrassed than sorry at this point.
There are four people who are currently _really_ stuck trying to get
this to work. That's way too many. But I haven't been able to figure
out why. Three are Digitrax users, but two are using a DB150 and one
is using a DCS100. Two are using Windows, and one is using a
Macintosh. And the fourth user is trying to connect to a Wangrow
system. There must be more than one thing causing all this
difficulty...
Bob,
Whenever I investigate the potential of a new product X, I always examine
all the existing products and players trying to imagine why they haven't
already done X. In this case you have proposed a product that is intended
to work across multiple hardware platforms. The hardware variations are
staggering, then add to that the various OS versions, and then add to that
all the different railroad hardware vendors and variations. I would say
with virtual certainty that the reason others have backed away (or tried and
failed) to do what you have done is that it is damn hard - certainly harder
than you imagined way back when.
Despite all that, my read of the problem reports is that you are getting
very close to the finish line. Now that the user base has expanded it
appears at first blush that lots of new problems are surfacing. I would bet
that it isn't lots of new problems, it's mostly serial comm and will boil
down to a few things showing up in different ways. These serial comm
problems are going to get resolved (like the handshake line issue with the
mac serial port add-on that was just resolved). At this point it's only a
question of getting through them a couple times until they can be
characterized and resolved.
IMHO there is nothing to be embarrassed about. There was a line in "The
Natural", something like "I believe we all lead two lives: the one we learn
with, and the one we live after that." When these DecoderPro issues are
squared away and things settled down you will have accumulated a huge amount
of knowledge in that first life. Wonder what you'll do with it in the
second? :-)
Robin Becker
Tucson, AZ
