Basic Stamp Board of Education USB over Virtual PC
njineermikey1
Posts: 5
First, my apologies if this question has been answered, but I didn't find it.
I'm running a BS2 over a board of education kit on a Win7 32 bit machine with XP Mode. I need the XP mode due to other software required by the company that interferes with several other software builds as well. Since the Gestapo requires the software, and scripts it to run, several of us are forced to use VPC or VirtualBox to get the software we still require on our machines to actually run. IT: Working hard so you can't work at all.
One of these is the basic stamp software. We use the basic stamps to run hardware simulations for PLC inputs of control circuits so they can run in a test mode with the actual PLC inputs being fired, which require us to reprogram them for new applications once the old one is finished. The old machines we were issued ran Win XP and the company software wasn't an interference, Now we have an issue: The board is identified, but we are unable to download to the stamps. Code of more than a few lines will cause a popup dialog with:
hardware communications failure! Check programming cable and power supply!
When I find an older XP machine, or one not with our software, it runs fine. Unfortunately, we aren't always in a position to use a spare machine.
Is there a known issue with virtual machine operation?
If so, is there a workaround?
Thank you.
I'm running a BS2 over a board of education kit on a Win7 32 bit machine with XP Mode. I need the XP mode due to other software required by the company that interferes with several other software builds as well. Since the Gestapo requires the software, and scripts it to run, several of us are forced to use VPC or VirtualBox to get the software we still require on our machines to actually run. IT: Working hard so you can't work at all.
One of these is the basic stamp software. We use the basic stamps to run hardware simulations for PLC inputs of control circuits so they can run in a test mode with the actual PLC inputs being fired, which require us to reprogram them for new applications once the old one is finished. The old machines we were issued ran Win XP and the company software wasn't an interference, Now we have an issue: The board is identified, but we are unable to download to the stamps. Code of more than a few lines will cause a popup dialog with:
hardware communications failure! Check programming cable and power supply!
When I find an older XP machine, or one not with our software, it runs fine. Unfortunately, we aren't always in a position to use a spare machine.
Is there a known issue with virtual machine operation?
If so, is there a workaround?
Thank you.
Comments
1) Speed. The download protocol is sensitive to execution speed. It's not that sensitive, but it can timeout if the virtualization slows down things too much. I've run the Stamp Editor under various virtualization programs on a Mac with Windows XP running in the virtual PC. It mostly worked. If any other applications or background processes (like Windows Update) were running, it would usually fail on a download.
2) Serial I/O. The virtualization software often has to do some buffering internally. This can introduce delays in the serial I/O and the download protocol is very sensitive to these delays. You might be able to configure the virtualization software to reduce this "latency" for the serial ports. This note may or may not be useful, but have a look at it.
I received same error message when I accidentally forgot to insert the EEPROM in my BS2e OEM I think that verifies what Mike is saying about
speed of download - in my case no download at all.