Getting your Data IO 29A working

orion3311

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For whatever its worth, because I know there's a few other threads mentioning this unit but not much answers...

I have a Data IO 29A with Unipak. I messed with it for some time last night on an XP machine with the various versions of Promlink with no luck - while the unit itself can send serial info (characters) to a terminal program fine, and it seems it can read what the computer is sending it, it still errored out with "Command Error 17" on any action.

Today I took an old USB key and made it dos bootable with Windows 98. Copied all the available versions of Promlink over to it as well and went to town. Long story short, both 3.4 (set to 29B with Unipack) and the older 2.6 version (proper) worked great on DOS. If you have a computer that boots from a floppy, you should have no problem fitting the older versions of Promlink onto a dos bootable 1.4meg floppy.

In addition, the 2.6 version had all the various Signetics proms listed, as well as 2708's for AMD and Intel, whereas the 3.4 had a problem with the device file and did NOT list 2708 support (not often needed but when working with b/w's a lot I wish I could at least test them - now I can!)

Promlink 6.1 did NOT work with the 29A - I wouldn't even try. the oldest version seemed to have the best results and worked fine.

You can find Promlink here: http://home.myfairpoint.net/mlps_vt/promlink.htm

As for cabling, I used a regular modem cable (9 pin female to 25 pin male), as well as a null modem adapter.

Hope this helps someone!
 
I run Promlink 6.1 on Windows XP with no problem on mine. You do have to have the window maximized, as it won't run in windowed mode.
 
Promlink doesnt support the 29A? I run 6.1 also but I have a 29B. What do you mean about the window maximixed? Mine runs in a window. Im running Win7 now but I never had any problems with it on XP either.
 
Note that this is for the 29A, not the 29B. Although I thought it was wierd that the 3.4 software with 29B selected seemed to work. In 6.1 I got the red box that yelled about not getting the proper response from the commands.

May be that the 29B is a lot more forgiving with the commands. I may beat that horse later but for now knowing it worked 100% in DOS was good enough. Not sure why it would even be different as I verified the serial data was coming through fine.
 
Come to think of it I believe mine is a B.

Alot of programs that run under a DOS window in XP don't work well with the Serial port, so you have to sometimes do a couple of things. First under the properties of the icon for promlink, there should be a check box for run in dos compatibility mode.

c&c_compatibility-mode.jpg


Next when the program starts it generally starts in windows mode and not full screen mode. I believe you can change this in the properties as well, or just press Alt+Enter

I think there is also a setting for priority as well, setting the program to max should help.

I wonder if running Dosbox would make a difference.

http://www.dosbox.com/
 
Tried Dosbox...seemed to make them run faster, but didn't make a difference in communicating to the burner. I was sorta hoping that would be the magic answer.

I also know (and didn't try) pre-setting the settings for the com port in Windows, which I know has worked in the past for other things.
 
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