[wp34s] MySamba and Windows 7

[lcwright1964]

For a couple of years I have flashed my wp34s collection with MySamba under WinXP in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine on my Mac. The only problem I ever had was when there was a mechanical problem with one of the calculators. Otherwise, if I follow the flashing instructions and use a support FTDI USB-serial converter, all is perfect.

There have been some troublesome bugs with XP of late and it seems unlikely that Microsoft will fix them prior to ceasing support for the older OS later this year. I bit the bullet and stepped up to 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate, again running in a virtual machine on my Mac. I have never been a Windows fan, but so far all is well for most of what I need it for.

Most of my calculator-based stuff that worked under XP works fine here, particularly Jeff Garnier's ILPer interface for the PILBox and Diego's software for programming my Nov64. The original wp34s emulator runs just fine too.

MySamba is a different matter. It launches fine, and I can navigate to the .bin flash file I need. However, there are no selections in the drop-down box for the COM port field. Entering the COM port used manually--and Device Manager tells me that my USB-Serial converter is detected fine and assigned to a port--doesn't work either. However, I go back to an XP virtual machine and MySamba behaves as it should.

Is this behaviour--MySamba not locating the COM ports when run under Windows 7--known behaviour for this? I really don't want to keep a buggy XP installation just to flash my calcs when the Windows 7 works beautifully for everything else.

Thanks in advance,

Les

[Marcel Samek]

(01-14-2014 02:02 AM)lcwright1964 Wrote:  MySamba is a different matter. It launches fine, and I can navigate to the .bin flash file I need. However, there are no selections in the drop-down box for the COM port field. Entering the COM port used manually--and Device Manager tells me that my USB-Serial converter is detected fine and assigned to a port--doesn't work either.

Are you running in elevated mode?

[lcwright1964]

(01-14-2014 02:21 AM)Marcel Samek Wrote:  Are you running in elevated mode?

If by this you mean I right-click on the MySamba executable and pick "Run As Administrator," I just did so and I will be darned--it works! The drop-down menu gives a selection of the COM ports, etc.

Now to test a flash job…

[lcwright1964]

(01-14-2014 02:50 AM)lcwright1964 Wrote:  Now to test a flash job…

No luck.

The blue light on my USB-Serial converter blips once, then nothing until the "Unable to Connect" message comes up. Had to go back into my XP installation to rescue the calculator.

I am pretty sure I installed the correct FTDI driver, and indeed the converter is detected fine, but the flashing doesn't proceed seamlessly here as it does under XP.

Les

[walter b]

(01-14-2014 03:19 AM)lcwright1964 Wrote:  

(01-14-2014 02:50 AM)lcwright1964 Wrote:  Now to test a flash job…

No luck.

The blue light on my USB-Serial converter blips once, then nothing until the "Unable to Connect" message comes up. Had to go back into my XP installation to rescue the calculator.

I am pretty sure I installed the correct FTDI driver, and indeed the converter is detected fine, but the flashing doesn't proceed seamlessly here as it does under XP.

Sounds like a question to Marcus. He's doing all his flashing on a Mac.

Regarding "native" Windows 7, I didn't experience any difficulties with MySamBa there - neither with an FTDI converter nor with direct USB link (the latter via Harald's pcb).

d:-)

[lcwright1964]

(01-14-2014 05:11 AM)walter b Wrote:  Regarding "native" Windows 7, I didn't experience any difficulties with MySamBa there - neither with an FTDI converter nor with direct USB link (the latter via Harald's pcb).

It used to be that it would drive me nuts that something didn't work if it was supposed to, but since flashing still works fine on the one computer in my XP virtual machine I will keep the XP setup around solely for this purpose and come back to getting it working under Windows 7 when I have the time and inclination. Nowadays I really only keep Windows around for a few things (Microsoft Money, a couple of stats programs that only run on Windows, and various HP calc things like ILPer, the Clonix burner, and MySamba), so it is a shame that this is the only thing I can't get working under 7, but the XP virtual machine only takes a couple of GB space and is no trouble to launch just for this reason. I have learned over the past couple of years that it is really important to me for the flashing to work smoothly--if I get that dreaded "unable to connect" message I groan to think of calc becoming a useless brick with dead batteries if I don't get it flashed soon. The MySamba-under-XP arrangement will stay for now.

Les