Quote:
Originally Posted by thingstodo
...Next on the agenda:
- get a second serial port working on the Arduino so that it can capture GPS data as well...
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Things did not go as planned this week. You may remember that I'm using an older laptop to program the Allen Bradley PLC 5/60 - the industrial computer that will be controlling SalvageS10 along with a modified industrial VFD.
Well, hardware eventually stops working. In this case, the LCD screen on the laptop stopped working ... sort of. The backlight appears to be on at full brightness all of the time, making the screen hard to read. The whole display 'ghosts' all of the time, so moving the mouse is an adventure in locating the pointer first of all, then making a series of moves that bring the pointer closer to what you remember was likely the icon you wanted to use ...
An external monitor helps, as the video card still seems to work OK. But the external monitor has a minimum resolution of 800 x 600, it will not run at 640 x 480 (plain jane VGA), which is how the laptop boots to dos. So I can't change the PLC program right now, or see what's going on inside.
(Correction from later - This monitor works at 640 x 480 just fine. I just need to turn on the external monitor, which the BIOS won't do on power up until after the POST. After that FN+F6 turns on the external VGA monitor)
While trying to locate an older monitor to use, this problem has helped me to see that I was very dependent on this old laptop for troubleshooting and programming. I have a spare (sometimes several) for every part that I'm planning to put into the truck ... and the laptop is not required to RUN the truck ... but it really IS required for any sort of troubleshooting. So I need to set up a 'spare'.
I was not successful, in my original search for a programming PC, in locating a DOS driver for PC cards (or PCMCIA), so a couple of my older laptops cannot be used simply because there is no serial port on them. The version that I'm running right now has drivers for USB storage, but not USB serial interfaces.
My 'newest' retired desktop is a P4 of some type ... but I think it still ran a Voodoo 2 video card, if anyone remembers those ... it may start up in VGA mode ... I guess we'll see. It's not exactly portable, but it can be moved and set up ... with some effort.
It's getting pretty old, and you can't purchase ... I think it was IDE hard drives (not eIDE, or Sata) any more, so it may be limited as a backup.