USB reliablity issues with Spin Stamp

ramman345

Hey all, pulled a new spin stamp and prop clip out of the box today and started loading code. I can hit F7 (identify hardware) and it finds the Propeller version 1 on COM 12 every time. But as a load code into RAM it fails 90% of the time, giving a "No Propellers found" error. Sometimes power cycling the spin stamp helps, but not every time. Sometimes I have to just keep hitting update to RAM over and over until it works.

Any suggestions?

Running Prop Tool v1.1, USB driver FTDI 2.2.4.0

J

Mike Green

Go through this USB troubleshooting document: www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/ftdi/USBDriverTroubleshooting-V1.0.pdf. Often the problem is in the I/O driver settings. It would be different if you couldn't get the Prop to identifiy itself, but that rules out most everything except timing problems. I used to get problems like this when I was using a really slow PC and it was downloading Windows updates in the background. Going to a faster PC and making sure Windows updates weren't being done in the background eliminated this for me.

Chuck Rice

I had the exact same symptom on my Mac running windows XP under parallels.
I just updated Parallels and MacOSX, and the problem went away, but I am
not sure which did it.

Prior to that, I found that if I used F8 to compile, then used the LoadRAM button
on the F8 screen, it would work every time. In addition to the things in
troubleshooting that Mike mentioned, these might also help.

ramman345

Chuck, it's funny that you should say that because I am running under Parallels on my Mac - Windows XP! But I have the latest version of Parallels, and believe that Windows XP is up to date.

Thanks for the trick though, it helps.

J

hippy

ramman345 said...
Chuck, it's funny that you should say that because I am running under Parallels on my Mac

And everyone else ... It always helps to give a full description of what the configuration is when asking a question because people will most likely assume you're using standard PC hardware and a native Windows OS in the absence of anything to the contrary and answer accordingly.

Luckily Chuck's intervention saved everyone wasting time giving help which would be applicable to a native Windows system but not solve the problem you have.

ramman345

hippy said...

ramman345 said...
Chuck, it's funny that you should say that because I am running under Parallels on my Mac

And everyone else ... It always helps to give a full description of what the configuration is when asking a question because people will most likely assume you're using standard PC hardware and a native Windows OS in the absence of anything to the contrary and answer accordingly.

Luckily Chuck's intervention saved everyone wasting time giving help which would be applicable to a native Windows system but not solve the problem you have.

While agree with the sentiment you will notice that I did post the Prop Tool and FTDI driver version numbers that I was using. While Chuck's work around works, it is not a solution and I have not found one yet. I am reluctant to blame Parallels because I use a wide variety of USB devices without incident, including some higher speed devices.

J

Mike Green

I have been using the Propeller Tool (all sorts of versions) with both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion and Windows XP Home. The only time I've had a problem like yours is when Windows was installing an update in the background. Make sure you've got enough real memory for what you've specified for a Windows configuration. I have 2GB on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (MacBook) and I'm using MacOS 10.5.3 although I've used less real memory and older MacOS versions in the past. Make sure the MacOS is not running anything significant in the background. I use MenuMeters to show what's going on in terms of processor and memory use.