Archived Data Techniques Forums

Hi.

I've been using FaxMan 4.04.05.00 for awhile now, but I am getting a lot of "Modem command timeout" errors trying to use Sportster modems at my customer location and on my own virtual test PC.  I'm using a PCI-Express Multi I/O card (SY-PEX-4S) for my COM ports on my PC, since it doesn't have any built-in COM ports & I don't have any USB modems.  The I/O card uses the MosChip 9845 chip with enough options to make me wonder if I have them all correct.

Hardware-wise,  I have the COM ports set to 8-bit, no parity, 1 stop bit, and no hardware or software flow control, 

I've tried both

AT&FE0V1&C1&D2S0=0L1M1
and
AT&F1&H3&I2&R2E0V1&C1&D2S0=0M1

init strings and it doesn't seem to matter--both are not only unreliable but the pages that do get sent are mostly unreadable.

Can you help me please?

Thanks!

Wendell Lovewell
MacKinney Systems, Inc.
(417) 882-8012

Hi,

A couple of suggestions:

1. For the init try:  AT&F1&H1E0V1&C1&D2S0=0M1

2. Download the next maintenance of the SDk which will be available next week from the My products page. This build has some changes which will work better with newer USR modems and will likely fix this issue when used with the proper init above.

Thanks for your reply Sean.  These are actually older Sportster modems. I can't tell if the problems are with VPC, the serial port, or FaxMan/Sportster settigns. Could you please answer a few more questions?

1) I'm trying to run in a Virtual PC system running 32-bit Windows XP.  Does FaxMan run well on a virtual image?  

2) The COM ports have all sorts of settings, including the old 8-bit, no parity, 1 stop bit sort of settings, plus speed, hardware flow control, and FIFO buffers in the ports themselves.  Would you have any suggestions on ways to set these things so that they are compatible with FaxMan talking to an external modem?

 3) Do you think Xon/Xoff would be better or worse than hardware flow control by the serial port themselves, or should I specify neither for the card?

 4) Have you had any problems running FaxMan 4 on multi- (quad-) core CPUs?

Thanks again for your help--it's very important!

Wendell

 Hello. Just a quick update.  I'm also trying to use a Quad Core CPU, but I'm running a virtual 32-bit Windows XP image under 64-bit Vista.  I've tried disabling the second core on each die, but that still leaves it as a dual cpu system.

 I have 3 or 4 Faxman4 controls in my application, but I don't know that VB 6 allows multi-threaded programs.

It doesn't seem to matter if I try to force it to class 1 or class 2.0. Do you think it would matter?

Thanks!

 Hi Wendell,

To answer your questions:

1. Yes, we do run FaxMan under Virtual PC and it seems to work OK.

2. FaxMan doesnt use these settings so you dont have to worry about them, it sets up the port as appropriate.

3. Hardware flow control is better and what we recommend.

4. There is one open issue we are looking into when running on a quad core PC that deals with certains events not firing after some period of time. We're still trying to duplicate this issue here so we dont have to much firm info on it yet.

Hi Sean.

I was wondering if you ever determined one way or another that Faxman4 is ok with quad-core cpus.  I haven't been able to test since I upgraded my pc.  I've installed Virtualbox to try it instead of VPC, and I see that the current moschip rev is 9901 so I'm ready to try again.  But can you tell me anything about Faxman 4 compatibility with:

a) Quad-core intel processors

b)  Moschip 9901 chipset serial cards

c) Virtualbox versus VPC?

Thanks again,
Wendell

Hi Wendell,

We dont have any know issues with Quad Core PCs.

We have tested with VPC but not Virtualbox at this time so you would be a pioneer at testing that.We'll be glad to provideany assistance with that though.