Com4 Not Available?

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Stephen's Dad
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Com4 Not Available?

Post by Stephen's Dad »

During our PWD yesterday a car handler accidentally yanked the Serial to USB adapter apart without anyone noticing. The next heat ran, the times appeared on the Micro-Wizard but nothing appeared on the computer. After it was reconnected, the computer has since displayed "Com4 not available" every time I've clicked the "Racing" tab in GPRM vers 5.0.5.

Any ideas?
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gpraceman
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by gpraceman »

Stephen's Dad wrote:During our PWD yesterday a car handler accidentally yanked the Serial to USB adapter apart without anyone noticing. The next heat ran, the times appeared on the Micro-Wizard but nothing appeared on the computer. After it was reconnected, the computer has since displayed "Com4 not available" every time I've clicked the "Racing" tab in GPRM vers 5.0.5.
With a USB to Serial adapter, if you unplug it, then that COM port will essentially disappear from your system. Reconnecting the adapter would restore that COM port, but it may not restore the connection to GPRM. Worst case, I would think, is that you should have been able to shutdown GPRM, start it back up and then go to the hardware setup screen to run a quick communications test to make sure it was working again.
Randy Lisano
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Stephen's Dad
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by Stephen's Dad »

Judging from the tests I have since run here at home, GPRM would have picked up right where we left off. Is that correct?

The Dell still won't recognize Com4 but this isn't a GPRM problem.
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

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Stephen's Dad wrote:Judging from the tests I have since run here at home, GPRM would have picked up right where we left off. Is that correct?
Data-wise yes. If you see the data on the screen, it is already saved to the data file.
Stephen's Dad wrote:The Dell still won't recognize Com4 but this isn't a GPRM problem.
Did you plug the adapter back into the exact same USB port that it was on before? The COM number will change if you try plugging it into a different USB port and with some of these adapters, you may even need to install the adapter's driver for each USB port that you want to use it on.

Try this
  • Click on the Windows Start button
  • Go to the Control Panel
  • Double click on the System icon (WinXP users may have to switch to Classic View to see the icon)
  • Go to the Hardware tab
  • Click on the Device Manager button
  • Scroll down the list and click on the + next to Ports (COM and LPT)
Then try plugging your adapter into different USB ports and see what COM number appears for that particular USB port.
Randy Lisano
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by Stephen's Dad »

The cable is a 2 piece affair. The longer section might have loosened where it attaches to the Laptops USB. But it was in place & remained there. The physical disconnect occurred under the track where the very short USB to Serial adapter meets the longer USB cable. A car handler knocked it loose with a Car Caddy & couldn't see the below track condition.

I'm on a different computer right now but will check the laptop later as you advised.
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by ExtremePWD »

I hooked up a laptop with the USB adapter and tested the setup the entire week before the race. Many combinations of plugged in before and after bootup and before and after starting GPRM. Over several days I never failed to achieve connection. I was pretty confident that I wouldn't have any problems on race day. Then on race day this past Saturday, it would not communicate. Went through the different ports on the computer, several reboots, reloaded the driver, tried a different adapter with the supplied driver. Checked and rechecked cable connections. Used device manager to disable the USB and reload the driver. No luck. Went to the backup laptop I brought (Plan B). Couldn't make that one work either. Finally, ran home and grabbed my desktop that had a serial port (Plan C). Success! Running about 10 minutes before the first race. Plan D was to manually enter the results and use points. Plan E was to run a manual quintuple elimination. Fortunately, I had my backups planned out before the race. I'll hook the system back up this week and try and debug it. Any ideas would be helpful.
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by gpraceman »

Good to hear that you were prepared and were able to get around Murphy striking.

When you looked at the Device Manager screen, did it give you any indication of a problem, like an exlamation point icon or saying that it wasn't working properly?
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by ExtremePWD »

Yes, there was an error indication and said the device was not working properly. After disabling then reloading the driver, it then showed that the device was working properly. I still was not able to communicate with the timer after that.
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Re: Com4 Not Available?

Post by ExtremePWD »

I hooked it all back up tonight and it works fine. I tried to duplicate the race day setup as much as possible but could not duplicate the issue. I suspect that I had generated the USB port device error before trying the different combinations I had described. Maybe after I resolved the hardware error I did not try all of the ports and moved on to Plan B after trying only one port. It will remain a mystery. We are loaning the track for the district race next month so I will try it again. I'll also repeat the bench testing several times between now and then for confidence building. The race method does not use times so there is no risk if the problem reoccurs.
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