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Bob,

I just tried the lastest version Decoder Pro (0.9.3.4) with Java package (1.4.0_01) real quickly on a Dell GX1, PIII 600 mhz, 256MB ram, Com1, and Windows 98SE.

This is a very quick test.

1) Installed then booted latest version of Decoder Pro

2) Set Layout Cnnection to LocoNet MS100

3) Set Serial Port to COM1.

4) Set Command Station to DSC100

5) Set GUI to Windows

6) Saved Preferences.

7) Restarted Decoder Pro.

8) Started Debug LocoNet Monitor.

9) Saw messages as I turned the knob of a throttle.

10) Messages indicated that slot 1 speed was changing. My engine with address 8127 changed speeds with the throttle.

The basic test indicates that Decoder Pro is communicating.

One quick suggestion. It would be nice to see the locomotive address in the LocoNet Monitor screen.

Al

Sorry to have been so out of touch; I've been working on the PC <-> MS100 connections.

To make a long story short, I've uploaded a test installer to:



for a DecoderPro version that should be able to talk to an MS100 on most(?) PCs.

I would greatly appreciate it if people could give it a try and let me know whether it works. I've tried it with an HP PC under Win95 and XP Personal Edition. I'm particularly interested to know if it installs properly and works on other windows versions, and if there's any particular hardware that it has trouble with.

Thanks in advance.

Bob

--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

Dear bob,

with your install program I?ve installed the Decoder Pro
part of the J/MRI project. The JAVA version is 1.4.0_01.

Conected via(non selected)
On port (non selectet).

Begining the installation I?ve great problems to understand it
but in the morning it works.

It works on a Max-Data computer with WINDOWS 98. On the same
Computer works C/MRI Interface without 8255, with new input
and outputcards for Pentium. The 8255 works there not good.

I see you are also in the C/MRI group. Lets now begin to laborate
with DCC, I?ve never work before.

best regards
dieter

Aleksandar,



dieter

Aleksandar,

in Germany there are some sites: Der_Moba.
They have PC and they do the same. PC connection with
layout an monitoring it.

Dieter




Model Railroad Electronics: C/MRI-Compatible Protocol for SECSI ...

-----

Thanks Bob and David.
Yes there is so many sites with DCC at real DIY base.
There is one problem. Those gays are mainly electronic experts, they
cannot bear that PC software do something instead of them.
And there is no just one DIY solution for connecting PC with layout for
monitoring it, mean PC connection with layout feedback.
Is my knowledge OK?

Best regards,
Aleksandar

from germany, many greetings to all
and bob

in post 101 I want to give an information: is here every boddy
from Europe?

I have translated the introduction to this Group:

Modellbahnbetriebsysteme.

Das J/MRI wurde gestartet um Modellbahnbetriebsysteme mit dem
Computer einzusetzen. Wir wünschen uns dies, um für eine
m?glichst
gro?e Anzahl von Anwender es bereitstellen zu k?nnen.

So haben wir die Plattform in JAVA geschrieben um es irgendwo auf
einem beliebigen Computer einsetzen zu k?nnen. Es ist also die
Plattform, um es unabh?ngig zu machen von einer spezifizierten
Hardware und Software. Es geht um die Beseitigung der
Flaschenh?lse,
also um alle Systemfehler der früheren Generationen der Hardware
von
Rechner- und ?bertragungs- system (Motorola und DCC), die
auszumerzen
sind.

Es ist der Ausgangspunkt für Amateure, welche ihre Modellbahn von
einem Rechner steuern wollen, ohne selbst ein Baukasten-System
aufbauen zu müssen. ?hnlich wie beim C/MRI zuvor, ohne Umbau von
Lok und Wagen, soll es jetzt mit DCC Komponenten umgehen k?nnen
und über Bussysteme oder UBS mit der zus?tzlich notwendigen
Elektronik
verbunden werden. Es soll die schnellere Installation und preiswerte
Systemanpassung f?rdern.

Durch offene Programme und Betriebssysteme wie LINUX ist dies
m?glich
und investitionssicher. Auch die Protokollsprachen des Internets und
der Austausch über Client Server und UBS erm?glichen mit
robusten BUS-
Systemen wie LocoNet die ?bertragung an die Ger?te, die
Modellbahnen steuern. Für Modulanlagen hat hier FREMO bereits
Vorleistungen bereit gestellt.

Um dieses zu verwirklichen haben wir die Probleme in zwei Teile aufge-
teilt, die im dazwischen befindlichen Teil im Interface Protokoll
liegen.

In der unteren Schicht ist der Code für die Anschlüsse der
spezifizierten
Anlagen – Hardware.

Darüber liegt das Interface Protokoll für die Programme die
Anwender
飞ü苍蝉肠丑别苍.

Die langfristige angelegte Strategie ist die Konstruktion eines Sets
von
?ffentlichen Programmen für jede Art von Typ der Anlage und Typ
von
Computer.

Bob Jacobsen

translate dieter

I want to make all as DIY, again all DCC part for full DCC system.

Do you have any advice?
Is there on www all to reach for DIY?

It depends on how much you want to do yourself.


If you want to assemble a command station and booster from parts, you can get an EasyDCC system in either a kit form, or as a bare PC board <>

The MERG group is made-up of real do-it-yourself types, including writing their own code for the internal processors, etc. They can help you design something yourself, and have various items available for you to build from parts. <> There's a similar club in Germany, but I don't have a URL for it handy.

The "Model Railroading with DCC" webring has some other sites that might be interesting. <>

On the layout software end, the idea behind JMRI is to create a library that makes that type of software easier to write. I got distracted by the decoder programming stuff, so that part is much further along at the expense of basic layout automation, but there is a bit available (turnout control, power control, simple display panels, etc). Unfortunately, there's little documentation, but the JmriDemo program lets you play with the tools a little, and I'd be happy to help you get started.

Bob

--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

Hi-
Check out these:
Bob Backway's list of sites:
Some selected sites:
MERG:
MERG DCC:
Robert Cote:
Stefano Curtarolo AuroTrains GNU-DCC projects @ MIT:

TMWDCC Hardware:
OmniPort, MRR project development board:

Linux:
LinTrain:
LinTrain Home Page:
Another good DIY:
And another:

They are on my model railroad FAQ at --- if you
find any more, please add them to that site.
Cheers, David

Aleksandar Vukalovic wrote:

Now, I have one (few) mor question.
I want to make all as DIY, again all DCC part for full DCC system.

Do you have any advice?
Is there on www all to reach for DIY?

--
David Harris
OmniPort Home Page:
Discussion egroup:
Swiki:

Dear Bob,
thanks for very much quolity and smart info.
I do and all and all is OK.

Now, I have one (few) mor question.
I want to make all as DIY, again all DCC part for full DCC system.

Do you have any advice?
Is there on www all to reach for DIY?


Best regards,
Aleksandar

At 3:33 PM +0000 6/13/02, scottdouglasgoodwin wrote:

Here's the problem. The windows serial driver has a built in
function/dialog that allows you to configure the serial port.
If you use the port settings under the device manager, you will see
that you are presented with a dialog that has a dropdown list for
setting the baud rate. The list doesn't include 16457. And you can't
type in 16457. So there's no way to set it to 16457 through the
device manager. If you use MSCOMM in VB, you can use the settings
property to set the baud rate, etc. Again, it won't accept 16457 for
the same reason. The package javax.javacomm apparently has the same
problem---it just won't accept 16457 because it is using the serial
driver's list of valid baud rates.

Of course, programs like LocoNetMon, RR&Co, and Winlok work just fine
on the same computers that MSCOMM,javax.javacomm, etc don't work. Why?
Well, if you look at the source code for LocoNetMon (available from
the loconethackers group), you will see that it opens the Com Port
using Win32K's CreateFile function wich returns a file handle/file
descriptor. This file handle is used in the function GetComState
which gets the current device control block (dcb). You can then set
the baud rate in the dcb to 16457. Then use SetCommState to apply the
new settings.

I've just spent a long day trying to get the RXTX implementation to work at 16457 baud. My apologies for the length of this; if you're not interested in hardcore details, please skip the rest of the email. But if there's any chance you can help, I'd appreciate it.

The good news: It's now pretty clear what the code is doing. After various preliminaries, there's a case statement that takes the 'speed' as an integer (e.g. 9600) and converts it to a defined constant (e.g. B9600). This value then is used to invoke

if(
cfsetispeed( &ttyset, cspeed ) < 0 ||
cfsetospeed( &ttyset, cspeed ) < 0 )
{
report( "nativeSetSerialPortParams: Cannot Set Speed&#92;n" );
goto fail;
}

where the constant was in the "cspeed" value and ttyset is a termios structure.

This can't handle the LocoNet rate, as cfsetispeed doesn't know about that rate; there's not a B16457 constant to express it, and the code doesn't look for it.

There is some code for dealing with the divisor explicitly. It's only compiled in if WIN32 is _not_ defined:

if ( ioctl( fd, TIOCGSERIAL, &sstruct ) < 0 )
{
goto fail;
}
...
sstruct.custom_divisor = ( sstruct.baud_base/cspeed );

if ( sstruct.baud_base < 1 ||
ioctl( fd, TIOCSSERIAL, &sstruct ) < 0 )
{
goto fail;
}

(In the snippet above, cspeed contains the rate as an integer, not as a defined constant; yes, that's confusing.)

This is the point where it gets wierd. Note that cfsetispeed isn't part of the native windows API, so what's happening here? The RXTX maintainers have produced their own implementation of cfsetispeed on top of the Windows routines! It lives in their termios.c and win32termios.h.

cfsetispeed and cfsetospeed just make notes for a latter copy to a Windows DCB's BaudRate member; ioctl(.., TIOCSSERIAL, ...) doesn't do anything at all!

So after a huge amount of indirection, the program really is just setting dcb.BaudRate and invoking SetCommState. Amazing!

All of the above is based on static analysis, but it looks right.

Now for the bad news. Despite 15 hours of effort (c.f. ) I still can't get the original program to compile! RXTX is a Linux project, so their instructions involve cross-compiling with gcc. It's a mess of Java-generated headers, headers copied from Windows to Linux, etc, all munged together by a 7k-line configure script.

I've appealed for help from the maintainers mailing list. I'm not sure what else to do.

The easiest hack (if I could get it to compile!) would be to change the mapping so that some other baud rate actually gets written to the DCB as 16457. For example, nobody uses 110 baud anymore, so I could just hack this line:
case B110: ret = CBR_110; break;
(CBR_110 is literally 110, and will eventually be loaded into the DCB) to
case B110: ret = 16457; break;
then have the program try 110 baud on Windows. If I could just get the $%%^$& thing to compile!!!

Anybody feel like trying to edit the binary contents in a .dll?

Bob

--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

I've made a second try at a Windows installer. If all goes well
(hah!), this will be the distribution form for Windows from now on.

The installer can be downloaded from:

Seems to work great.

One other minor thing you could set in the shortcut is to run the batch file
"Minimised so that the Command window is not promenently placed in the
centre of the screen. I had thought that starting a java app using the javaw
command made it detach from the console and allow the command window to
close. However after a quick play, there must be more to it than that...

Alex

Jon,

I have the updated file that I just sent to Bob. Go to



then Right-Click on decpro.ico, and select "Save Target As" to get the file
onto your machine.

Robin

I downloaded AWicons and this seems like the program to use. 16 & 32
bit color, plus other stuff. Icon size 16, 32, 48, 64, and custom. Just
like a draw program. It will import other icons as I checked it with the
ones Bob linked to.
It wants you to register in 30 days ($19). Now all we need is an
artist<G>!

Jon Miller
AT&SF
For me time has stopped in 1941
Digitrax DCC owner, Chief system
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

Bob,

I have patients. I have waited this long. I can wait longer. What is a few more weeks if it works.

Al

At 12:05 PM +0200 6/29/02, Aleksandar Vukalovic wrote:

Dear Gentlemen, please, can we go from beginning?
I have XP and same problem.
How and what I need to install Java?
Do I have to know something or anything about Java, for install and
using JMRI?

I think the simplest approach is:

1) Download the installer from and run it

2) If Java is not present, it will take you to a Sun download page & quit. Click the download button on that page, follow any instructions that come up, and wait for it to complete. (It's a big download, and may take some time)

3) Rerun the installer again. It should go OK this time.

4) From the Start Menu -> Programs -> Jmri run the DecoderPro program. A preferences window will pop; select your DCC type (NCE, EasyDCC, etc), comm port, and click "save". You'll be asked if you want to quit, say yes.

5) Restart the program and you're ready to go.

(I've not yet updated the README file to use the above steps, will do that soon).

You don't need to know anything about Java, and the new installer is supposed to handle all the rest of the details.

One problem: Windows XP will _not_ work with a Digitrax LocoNet via a MS100 yet. If you have a Digitrax command station, you'll need to use a LocoBuffer, or wait a week or two.

Bob
--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

At 11:08 PM -0400 6/28/02, Al Silverstein wrote:

When I tried to launch DP I received the message "Failed to set the current baud rate for the MS100. Port is set to 9600baud. See readme file for more info. The baud rate is grayed out at 16600.

Jon's already replied, but I thought I'd add my apologies that it's taken so long to get this problem resolved. Until recently, I didn't have a PC readily available for testing on Windows. With my son's recent 10th birthday, I bought him a present (ahem) of a cheap PC that's currently resident in the train room. So now I'm learning Windows. The first project is the installer, and next I start on the MS100 baud-rate problem.

Thanks for your patience. I really do want to get all this resolved before the NMRA convention next month.

Bob

--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

At 5:42 PM -0700 6/28/02, Jerry Drews wrote:

As you must have suspected, my machines did not have the Java software
installed.

Actually, I thought that the installer was checking for the presence of Java, and would have mentioned if it didn't find it. Since it hadn't, I was a little confused.

But one can never really overestimate the subtlety of Windows. There are apparently some Windows systems that come with _part_ of Java. That was enough to fool my simple test, while still confusing the rest of the installer and probably not letting the program run.

I've beefed-up the checking, and added some error handling. Hopefully the new version will work better. Sorry for the extra work.

Having done this, I re-ran the install and it seemed to complete correctly.

When I clicked on the DecoderPro icon on the desktop, it blinks, but nothing
seems to happen.

If I execute "decoder pro" from within a command prompt defaulted to the
d:&#92;program files&#92;jmri folder, I get the user interface which looks
reasonable. I am not connected to my railroad now. The program interface
seems to work o.k. When I quit, the command prompt window contains:

...

.DecoderPro
java.lang.NullPointerException
at
jmri.jmrit.symbolicprog.CombinedLocoSelListPane.setDecoderSelectionFr
omLoco(CombinedLocoSelListPane.java:233)

Those are real bugs in that version; the first problem is the fault of the installer, and the second one was in the code itself. They are hopefully now fixed in the new upload, thanks for the detailed info.

Bob
--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

At 12:02 PM -0700 6/28/02, Bob Jacobsen wrote:

At 10:09 AM -0700 6/28/02, Jerry Drews wrote:
>Also, when the installer
>splash screen opens, the program pauses until a key is struck or the mouse

is clicked with the cursor within the white area. We probably need a
"Strike any key to continue" message or a "Continue" button. Otherwise, it

>just seems to hang without any clue as to what action to take.

As to that first splash screen, I hope it's temporary. The installer
is built with a tool from MindVision. I've talked to them about
letting us use it for free. So far, they've agreed that use for
"occasional tests and demos" is OK, and I'm still hoping that they'll
allow me to use it for distributing free software. If they do, that
first splash screen goes away.

Mindvision agreed to let me use the installer tool without charge. I think that's a great thing for them to do. But in return they want to keep that first screen as advertising, which seems fair. They were happy to add a "click to continue line".

The new screen is in the installer I just uploaded.

Bob
--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.

I've made a second try at a Windows installer. If all goes well (hah!), this will be the distribution form for Windows from now on.

The installer can be downloaded from:



The changes include:

New icons from Robin Becker - thanks! It's starting to
look like a real program...

Fix of the null reference crash located by Alex Shepherd

Shortcut and program items now function properly

Improved check for Java being present; if it's not
found, quit installer and take user to the Java download
page

Preferences are now stored in "Windows standard location".
This is a mixed blessing; it's necessary to get the
uninstall and reinstall operations to work reliably, but
it means that you'll have to search around if you ever
need to find the preferences manually. And if you
upgrade your Windows version, you might have to re-enter
your DecoderPro preferences (probably the least of your
problems then, but still a pain)

Thanks in advance for trying this, I appreciate any comments, suggestions, etc.

Bob
--
--------------
Bob Jacobsen (Bob_Jacobsen@..., 510-486-7355, fax 510-495-2957)
Am working off a huge email backlog, call if it's urgent.