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Using
the Allen-Bradley 1784-PCMK with Windows 95 IMPORTANT: Please
read the section Updating Your Driver
if you are upgrading from a previous version, or you will experience problems!
Be sure to run the latest version of PCMKUPDT.EXE when updating! In a hurry?
We understand. This section will get the PCMK Plug and Play driver installed
quickly, but please consider reading this entire document, especially if you
encounter problems; answers to the most common questions may be found here.
That said: ·
If you've already installed a
previous version of the 1784-PCMK Plug and Play driver, skip to the section
titled Updating Your Driver. ·
If you haven't already done so,
enable Windows 95's built-in PCMCIA support by double-clicking the PC Card icon
in Control Panel. If you
don't have this icon in Control Panel, Windows 95 couldn't detect your PCMCIA
socket hardware; contact the hardware provider for support. ·
Insert a PCMK into your system.
On insertion, Windows 95 detects the hardware and builds a driver
information database as it searches for an appropriate driver. ·
Windows 95 then displays a New
Hardware Found dialog. Select
the Driver from disk provided by hardware manufacturer option and click OK. ·
You'll be prompted for the drive
and directory of the new driver files (RSIPCMK.INF, RSIPAGE.VXD,
and RSIPCMK.VXD); enter this information and click OK. ·
If you're currently loading EMM386.EXE
in CONFIG.SYS, note that this may interfere with the driver's ability to
map the PCMK into DOS memory. You
may either remove EMM386.EXE from CONFIG.SYS, or use it with the WIN=
option. Please see the Troubleshooting
section of this document for further details. ·
You may be required to reboot your
system to complete the installation. That's all there is to it! At
this point, your PCMK should be configured and ready to use with compatible
applications as described in the Application Compatibility section
of this document. If you experience trouble using the PCMK (i.e., your
application software can't find the PCMK), read through the Troubleshooting
section of this document for help. The
section Tips, Notes, and Enlightenment also contains several hints
which you might find helpful. ·
WINtelligent LINX version 4.40
or greater works fine with the PCMK
under Windows 95. You should make
sure that a PCMK is installed in the system before you attempt to configure it.
If LINX is already set up to use a PCMK, it should be present before LINX
is started. Note that when you
first configure LINX to use a PCMK, you'll probably get a message that says
something like Unable to locate an EMMExclude=cb00-cbff entry in the
SYSTEM.INI file...; ignore this message.
Under Windows 95, LINX isn't dealing with the true physical address of
the PCMK, so the exclusion isn't necessary. ·
A.I. Series PLC-5 programming
software version 7.19 or greater, A.I. Series PLC-500 programming software version 7.08 or greater,
PLC-2 A.I. Series programming software version 6.22 or greater, A.I.
Series PLC-3 programming software version 6.18 or greater, A.I. Series
PLC-5/250 programming software version 1.39 or greater, and A.I. Series
PLC-5/250 programming software revision 1.39 or greater also work well with
the Plug and Play driver. There is
a small glitch in some earlier versions you should be aware of.
After one of these applications uses the PCMK within a DOS box, that PCMK
is owned by that DOS box until it is closed (i.e., by typing the EXIT command
at the DOS prompt). Other
applications will not be able to use the PCMK until the DOS box is closed.
This minor glitch is fixed in later releases of the A.I. Series
programming software. No known third-party
software is currently compatible with this driver, but Rockwell Software makes
the interface to this driver freely available to anyone who wishes to use it.
Have your third-party software supplier contact the Communications
Business Unit of Rockwell Software for details. This section describes how
to install an update to the PCMK Plug and Play driver.
Updates may be obtained through several online sources as listed in the
section of this document titled Tips, Notes, and Enlightenment. ·
If you've manually changed any
settings for the PCMK, write down the settings that work for your computer
(Gateway Solo users must do this because of a bug in that machine's BIOS;
see the Troubleshooting section for more information on the Solo).
You may need to manually re-set the address and/or IRQ after updating. ·
Remove all PCMK cards from your
computer. ·
Run the PCMKUPDT.EXE
program provided with the driver. This
program will remove the old configuration information from the registry and
delete the old driver files. This
is necessary because of changes made to the driver which require it to be
cleanly installed. You must
run the PCMKUPDT.EXE program distributed with this version of the driver
— do not rely on Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs applet to
fully prepare your system for this new version of the driver. ·
Follow the instructions in the Quick
Start section to install the new driver version.
In a nutshell, this just involves inserting a PCMK and following the
instructions on your screen. Using the provided
uninstaller, removing the Plug and Play driver from your computer is easy.
To run the uninstall program: ·
From Control Panel, run the
Add/Remove Programs applet. ·
Select the Allen-Bradley
1784-PCMK and click the Add/Remove button. You'll have the chance to cancel the operation before
anything is actually deleted. Tips, Notes, and Enlightenment ·
Before removing a PC Card such as
the PCMK from a system running Windows 95, click on the PC Card icon on
your taskbar to stop the card. This
allows Windows 95 to make sure it is safe to remove the card, and to warn you if
it is not. If Windows 95 tells you
that the PCMK shouldn't be removed, make sure that any applications that might
be using it are shut down, then try again. Removing a PCMK which is being used by an application could
cause your system to fault. ·
If you don't see the PC Card icon
on your Windows 95 taskbar, double click the PC Card icon in Control
Panel, and check the box labeled Show control on taskbar.
You should now see the PC Card icon on the taskbar whenever a PC
Card is installed in your system. If
you ever change your PC Cards on-the-fly, you'll find this icon very
useful. ·
A Control Panel applet
called PCMKinfo is installed along with the Plug and Play driver to allow
quick and easy viewing of the PCMK’s physical settings.
To run PCMKinfo, open Control Panel and double-click its
icon. ·
Right-clicking on the PC Card icon
on the taskbar allows you to display PCMCIA properties.
This shows you which PC Cards are in each socket, and allows you to
select a card to be stopped. This
is particularly convenient when you have more than one PCMK, and you need to
stop one of them prior to removal. Left-clicking
the PC Card icon allows you to stop the cards as well --- and is faster
if you only have one PCMK --- but doesn't tell you which card is in which
socket. ·
Note that services provided by
this driver are only available while Windows 95 is running.
If you shut down Windows 95 and select the Restart the computer in
MS-DOS mode? option, the Windows 95 PCMCIA support will not be loaded. ·
In the PCMCIA properties dialog,
you may notice that PCMCIA sockets are labeled Socket 1, Socket 2,
etc. Rockwell Software products
currently refer to these sockets by a zero-based socket number, so specifying
socket number 0 in a Rockwell Software product really refers to what
Windows 95 calls Socket 1. This
confusion is created by a hole in the PCMCIA standard, which does not specify
what a socket should be called; Microsoft happened to start numbering at one,
and we started numbering at zero well before the introduction of Windows 95.
For now we have to live with it, but we are actively pursuing a real solution
by participating in the PCMCIA standards organization and working with
Microsoft. ·
For the latest version of the
Windows 95 PCMK driver, check any of the following resources (the driver is in
an archive named RSIPCMK.ZIP): ·
Our home on the World Wide Web, http://www.software.rockwell.com;
the exact location of the file may change as our Web site is enhanced, but you
should be able to locate the download area without too much trouble; ·
If you don't own a modem or can't
access our website for other some reason, call Rockwell Software at 216-646-7800. ·
In some recent OEM releases of
Windows 95, Device Manager's Driver tab for the PCMK might display
a message stating that "no driver files are required or have been loaded
for this device," even though the PCMK is working properly.
Ignore this message; it is a bug in the new version of the Windows 95 Device
Manager. ·
If your system has other PC Cards
besides the PCMK and you have tones enabled for PC Card insertion, don't be
surprised if you hear more than one notification per card!
As Windows 95 detects devices during the boot process, it may find that
it needs to adjust the resources used by each device.
When it changes the settings for a device, it'll generate the
notification tones again. This is
normal. ·
When you install the drivers,
Windows 95 copies RSIPCMK.VXD, RSIPAGE.VXD, and PCMKUPDT.EXE into
your Windows system directory (usually \WINDOWS\SYSTEM), and copies RSIPCMK.INF
into a hidden device information directory (usually \WINDOWS\INF).
When RSIPCMK.INF is copied, it is also renamed as OEM*.INF,
where the asterisk represents a number assigned by the system.
Entries are then placed in the registry so that the PCMK can be quickly
recognized by the system the next time it is used.
The utility program PCMKLIST.EXE is not automatically copied with
the driver files. ·
You probably won't have reason to
care, but... if you happen to browse the resources assigned to a PCMK from the
system properties dialog box, don't be surprised if an application reports the
card at a different address. In
fact, two DOS boxes might report the same PCMK at two different addresses!
That's okay. The resource
assignment reported by Windows is the physical address assigned to the card.
This physical address is mapped by the driver to a virtual address
for each application to use. It
looks sort of bizarre when you see it, but it is perfectly normal behavior. ·
About EMM386:
If everything seems to be
working okay, but the application you're using gives you an error that reads
something like Unable to retrieve information for socket or PCMK is
not at specified socket or is in use, check the following: ·
Be sure that you've specified the
right socket. Remember, Rockwell
Software products currently number sockets starting at zero, whereas Windows 95
starts numbering at 1. ·
From the Start menu, select
Run..., type in SYSEDIT as the program to run and click the OK button.
This will start an editor which allows you to modify AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS files, among others. Check
CONFIG.SYS to see if EMM386.EXE or a similar memory manager is
being loaded; if it is, comment it out (insert a REM in front of the
line), save the file, and restart Windows 95.
See if this fixes the problem. If
you don't actually need EMM386.EXE (under Windows 95 it's only needed to
load stuff high to get more conventional DOS memory), you can leave things as
they are. If you do need it (i.e.,
for old DOS programs which require loads of conventional memory), add WIN=xxxx-yyyy
to your EMM386.EXE line, where xxxx-yyyy is an unused memory
range in the system. You must allow
at least 4K of memory for each PCMK; some systems require may even require more,
so try a large block if a smaller one fails.
For example, if you have 2 PCMK cards and the 8K range D000-D1FF is
available, you'd have a line something like this in CONFIG.SYS: device=c:\windows\emm386.exe
WIN=D000-D1FF Again,
do this only if you absolutely need EMM386.EXE; comment it out if
possible. ·
If the driver still doesn't work,
right click on the My Computer icon and select the Properties option
to bring up the System Properties dialog box.
Click on the Device Manager tab to display the devices in your
system. If Allen-Bradley PC
Cards has a plus sign next to it, click it to expand that section; the Allen-Bradley
1784-PCMK device should be displayed. Click
on the Allen-Bradley 1784-PCMK to highlight it, then click the Properties
button. ·
If Code 10 is reported in
the box labeled Device status, click on the Resources tab in the
dialog box to see if there are any resource conflicts listed in the Conflicting
device list. If there are, you
may need to alter the settings of the listed devices to get the PCMK to work. ·
Even if there are no conflicting
devices, you may have to override the address of the PCMK to get it to work on
some systems. In Device Manager,
click the PCMCIA socket device type to expand it, click the PCMCIA
controller used by your system, and then click the Properties button. Check
the Drivers tab to see if the driver you're using is CBSS.VXD (if
you have a recent OEM version of Windows 95 you may have to click a button
labeled Driver File Details… to view this information).
If this is the driver you're using, you'll probably have to manually
override the address of the PCMK to make it work; this is a bug in Microsoft's CBSS.VXD
that they are currently working on. If
you still can't make the PCMK work, you may have to use a different computer
with the PCMK until a newer version of the PCMK Plug and Play driver becomes
available with a version of CBSS.VXD greater than 4.00.1116. ·
If Code 10 is reported as
above but there are no conflicting devices, click the Cancel button to
return to the System Properties dialog, and click the plus sign by the PCMCIA
socket device type to expand it. Click on the PCMCIA controller used by your system, then
click the Properties button. If
the Device status does not say This device is working properly,
you have a general PCMCIA problem on your system and should contact your
hardware supplier for resolution. If
it is working okay, click the Resources tab and check the Conflicting
device list for possible hardware conflicts.
You may also want to try enabling the Use automatic settings
option if it is not already enabled. ·
To assist you in troubleshooting
applications which run within a DOS box, we have included a DOS utility called PCMKLIST.EXE
with this version of the Plug and Play driver.
Note that this program is not automatically copied to your hard disk.
When run at a DOS prompt, it should display something like this: PCMKLIST Version 1.02 Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 Rockwell Software
Inc. All rights reserved. RSIPCMK Version 0.83 emulating PCMKINIT
Version 1.12 under Windows 95. 2 PCMKs configured.
Socket 0: Dual-port at CB00,
IRQ 7 assigned.
Socket 1: Dual-port at CC00,
no IRQ assigned. This
tells us that there are two PCMKs in this system which are mapped to addresses
CB00 and CC00, and that the card at CB00 is also using IRQ 7.
The addresses given are virtual addresses specific to this DOS
box, and are usually different from the PCMK's physical address.
If PCMKLIST is able to detect the version of RSIPCMK, we know that
the Plug and Play driver is running and the interface to it is working.
If it can detect your PCMK cards, then the PCMK cards should be usable
from within DOS applications that support this interface.
(Note: versions of PCMKLIST
below 1.02 won't report the RSIPCMK version, but will still return the
version of PCMKINIT that RSIPCMK emulates.) ·
Gateway Solo users might
experience problems where software will report that the PCMK memory cannot be
found, or that the card isn't present at the specified address.
This is apparently caused by a BIOS problem in the Solo; BIOS version
1.06 may fix the problem, but is currently in beta testing.
The latest BIOS (including 1.06 Beta) may be downloaded from Gateway
2000's BBS at 605-232-2224 or from their website (http://www.gw2k.com).
For now, you need to override the address that Windows 95 automatically
assigns to the PCMK (the ones we've seen have been at address CA000,
which the Solo BIOS mistakenly thinks is unused).
To do this: ·
Insert the PCMK into the system. ·
Remove EMM386.EXE from CONFIG.SYS,
if present. It usually isn't needed
under Windows 95. ·
Bring up Device Manager
from the System icon in Control Panel (or by right-clicking the My
Computer icon and selecting Properties). ·
Double-click the Computer
at the top of the device list to display the resources used by the system, then
select the Memory radio button to display memory ranges in use.
Find a range at or above D0000 that isn't in use. ·
Close that dialog, click the plus
sign next to Allen-Bradley PC Cards to expand it, then double-click on
the 1784-PCMK listed under Allen-Bradley PC Cards to display its
properties. Select the Resources
tab on that dialog, and disable Use automatic settings.
Click on the memory range listed and the click the Change button.
Enter D0000-D0FFF (or whatever range was free) as the new range
for the card and click OK. Close
the remaining dialogs and follow any prompts; you may be required to restart
Windows. ·
Some NEC VERSA 2400 laptops also
have a BIOS problem. NEC has
cooperated with Rockwell Software in designing a fix for this machine.
To get this fix, download the self-extracting file L6510CB3.EXE
from NEC’s BBS at 508-635-4706. You
may need to leave mail to the sysop of the NEC BBS to gain access to this file.
You should also check to see if a more recent version — which may have
a different filename — is available. This
should also eventually be available on NEC’s website, http://www.nec.com. ·
The Novell 32-bit network client
that comes with Windows 95 appears to have an appetite for DOS memory, and can
prevent the PCMK from being found by PCMKLIST, WINtelligent LINX,
or MS-DOS applications such as the A.I. Series programming software.
If you run into this problem, try loading EMM386.EXE in CONFIG.SYS,
and use the WIN= option to give Windows drivers 32K more memory than you’d
normally need for just the PCMK. For
example, to allow for one PCMK (which requires 4K) and the Novell client (which
seems to eat 32K), you’d have EMM386.EXE give 36K to Windows 95 like so
(assuming that the range D000-D8FF is available in your computer): device=c:\windows\emm386.exe NOEMS
WIN=D000-D8FF ·
If you remove EMM386.EXE from
CONFIG.SYS and then find that you get strange errors such as EMS
hardware problem when attempting to go online with your programming
software, check the properties for the DOS box you're running the programming
software in. Right-click on the
icon or the window's title bar and select Properties to display the
properties dialog, then click the Memory tab to view memory settings.
If Expanded (EMS) Memory is set to Auto, try setting it to None;
this should get rid of the problem. ·
If the icon displayed for the PCMK
in Device Manager is a gray diamond, or if the version of the driver
displayed in Device Manager is below 2.20, you probably have a newer OEM
release of Windows 95 that changed the location of some files.
You should run PCMKUPDT.EXE from the latest version of the PCMK
Plug and Play driver that you have (nothing less than version 2.20), then plug a
PCMK into your system and reinstall the latest driver.
This should fix the problem. Version 2.21, 07/08/97 ·
Performance with RSLinx
significantly improved, whether or not interrupts are used. ·
Interrupts are now fully supported
with RSLinx. ·
An updated version of Microsoft's CBSS.VXD
(4.00.1116) is distributed with the driver and will be automatically installed
as needed. This fixes some problems
on recent OEM releases of Windows 95 — typically memory test failures.
This file is redistributed with Microsoft's permission. (This version still has some problems that Microsoft is
working on; see the Troubleshooting section of this document for
details.) ·
A PCMK icon is now displayed in Device
Manager instead of a gray diamond. (See
the Troubleshooting section of this document if you still see a
gray diamond for the PCMK!) ·
The class name in Device
Manager has changed from Allen‑Bradley PC Cards to Allen‑Bradley
PCMK family. This change
is to avoid confusion as other non-PCMK PCMCIA cards are released by Allen‑Bradley. ·
Fixed a bug which would cause
RSLinx to crash or miss a packet when the packet length for DH+ was greater than
255 bytes. Version 2.00, 01/29/97 ·
Version 1.90 Beta released as
general release version 2.00. Version 1.90 Beta,
12/19/96 ·
Fixed a code problem which could
potentially cause major faults, such as invalid opcodes or general
protection faults. ·
Added a 32-bit Windows application
interface for RSLinx. ·
Distribution disk now includes PCMKinfo,
a Windows 95 Control Panel applet for displaying card information (note
the PCMKinfo does not work with versions of the driver below 1.01 Alpha). ·
Added a workaround for a 1784-PCMK
Series A problem which could make the card fail memory tests in applications,
even though the card appeared to be configured correctly and PCMKLIST would
display the card's address in a DOS box. This
problem seems most prominent on computers with PCI bridges. ·
PCMK Series B and PCMKS Series A
support added. ·
The PCMKLIST utility
provided has been upgraded to display special information under Windows 95. ·
In Device Manager PCMKs now show
up under the Allen-Bradley PC Card class rather than under Other
devices. ·
Uninstaller upgraded to remove
references to the PCMK from multiple profiles, to
remove entries for PCMK/B and PCMKS/A cards, and to remove the PCMKinfo
Control Panel applet. Version 1.00, 05/06/96 ·
Version 0.83 Beta upgraded to
general release version 1.00. Version 0.83 Beta,
04/15/96 ·
Driver is now built using the
general release version of the VtoolsD library. ·
In an attempt to alleviate
problems where the PCMK is initialized but a memory window can't be allocated
within a DOS box, we've added a second driver file.
This file, RSIPAGE.VXD, loads when the system starts and reserves
memory for any PCMKs which might later be inserted.
This approach is experimental, and may or may not turn out to be
beneficial. One unfortunate side
effect is that the user may now have to reboot the system the first time the
driver is installed. ·
The PCMKLIST utility is now
included with the driver. See the Troubleshooting
section of this document for details. ·
An uninstaller Wizard for the PCMK
Plug and Play driver is now provided, PCMKUPDT.EXE.
This program completely removes the PCMK Plug and Play driver from the
registry and deletes the driver files from disk, allowing a clean install of new
driver versions to be performed. After
version 0.83 Beta is installed, this program is also available from the Control
Panel's Add/Remove Programs applet. Version 0.82 Beta,
12/12/95 ·
RSIPCMK.INF was
modified to allow a wider range of interrupts to be usable with the PCMK. ·
We changed the device driver
registration and associated device start/stop code.
This allows resources to be reallocated as needed by the system when
there is contention with another device. For
example, if a PCMK is currently assigned the last remaining IRQ in the system
and a device requiring an IRQ is plugged in, the system can adjust the
configuration of the PCMK to allow it to run without an interrupt. Version 0.81 Beta,
12/01/95 ·
We added code to prevent
applications from faulting when a PCMK card is removed while it is still in use.
We still strongly recommend that you stop any applications using the
PCMK before removing it from the system. Removal
of a PCMK while in use could cause unpredictable results! ·
We removed some dead code left
over from the initial development effort. Version 0.80 Beta,
11/27/95 ·
Initial beta release of the
Windows 95 PCMK support. |
|
