Thursday, January 15, 2009

More on Trouble Shooting...Back Tracking....

As I have been informed, dealing with hardware related issues can make life tough and difficult. Through out my independent study, I have dealt with the problem of getting programs to transmit from the computer to the RCX unit. And just when I thought that I had figured it out (problem being that it didn't want to transmit when I was remoted into the computer), I find that once again, I am trying to figure why it won't transmit.

Since the last post I have:

  • Changed the battery in the IR transmitter (Doesn't seem to make a difference, although plugging it in fully does)
  • Tried changing a setting on the Serial Port through Windows, since someone mentioned on a forum that they had been able to get it to work but that it ran slow...so I tried turning off a buffer setting to see if that made a difference. It didn't. I then turned it back on.
  • So I then decided to see if I could load the Lego firmware back onto the RCX, it did it. Just fine and dandy!! I was able to load a NQC program on to the RCX brick and it worked just fine.

What I am thinking could be the problem is that the leJOS for the RCX is no longer being supported and Java has since moved onto a newer version. According to the leJOS website, it should work with Java 1.1 -1.5, I think that we might be on Java 1.6 or version 6 (that is if they haven't changed their confusing ways ;-) )So my next plan of action is to go dig up an older installer of Java that I have, in hopes that maybe installing an older Java will fix the problem and that any problems I do face, I will be able to solve quickly since I might have already seen them.

On a happier note: In doing this trouble shooting, I reinstalled the NQC program for my LucyLeia (she was still all together....Just wasn't connected to her brain ;-)). Then after reconnecting her up and running the program, I noticed she switch which side of her that she was putting the colors on. Taking a wild guess that this might have to do with the orientation of the Lego block with the wire was plugged onto the RCX, I turned it by 90 degrees so that the wire was now running off the side instead of the bottom, like I had first reconnected it. Ran the program again. And Exciting stuff....she switched back to the sides that she was dropping them before, when I first had connected her up.

Time since last post: 2 hours
Overall: 33 hours 25 minutes

Still Trouble Shooting....

To continue on from where I was yesterday....With the lovely error of not being able to find the classes....This is where I started today....I have since tried multiple things to try and solve that error, which it seems that I may have. I know receive an error of not finding the Tower. Specifically: "error while downloading: Tower error: write failure". But let us back track and see what I did to get here.

  • Multiple deleting of files and recopying: I have deleted the folder that I had put the leGOS files into. Copied over straight the newer 3 version with no version 2 files in the folder. Still getting the error. Deleted files again copied over version 2 files and then copied over only one file from version 3, in hopes that that would take care of both the former problem (that was corrected with version 3) and the new one. And then reverted back to only having version 3 files in the folder.
  • Our friend Google, linked me out to a forum, where someone mentioned that to fix their problem they had to change the RCXTTY =USB variable to all lower case. So I tried that with my RCXTTY=COM variable...after making it lower case and putting a 1 directly behind it (and a couple of good old reboots), I got a new error....
"error while downloading: Tower error: bad ir link"....Have yet to google this one or try changing out the battery but from what I have read the IR tower is only suppose to be turned on when transmitting data or when the green light is on. So I have not yet pursued that route.

Time for today: 2 hours
Overall: 31 hours 25 minutes

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