Watlow F4 not being detected

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Thread Starter

Paul

As the title says, we have an environmental chamber with a Watlow F4D controller in which we had a computer connected with an RS232 cable and a LabView based program in which we could monitor and/or control the temperature and humidity of the chamber.

When we needed to add a DAQ card, we got a new computer with that capability, but it didn't have a serial port (it has a motherboard header, but no port). We added a PCIe serial port card with a 16950 UART.

On the old computer, the controller shows up with the LabView program and Watlow's WatView software no problem. Same cable on the "new" PC, both the identical LabView program and WatView can not detect the controller.

I have read through the F4 manual and various documents on UARTs.

Because the controller can be detected on the old computer, but not the new one, using the same cable, using Watlow's software, I have to conclude it's some sort of com port setting (or weird windows thing or some BIOS thing). I should add, both computers run XP SP3, the "newer" computer just runs it better.

For the time being, we have a thermocouple in place to read the chamber temperature and we're running profiles on the controller itself, but it's a bandaid solution.
 
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Curt Wuollet

Check out what port it is being assigned to. a lot of software isn't flexible about them. Windows should be able to tell you and/or the BIOS may show it. I know Linux prints this sort of thing on startup. You may be able to hard assign this in the "legacy" settings in the BIOS. Another way is to use terminal and a loopback plug, this will also verify the card works. In the old DOS days you could swap the ports to accommodate inflexible software but I've largely ignored Windows so someone else will have to tell you if this still can be done.

Regards
cww
 
C

Curt Wuollet

P.S. You might try disabling the builtin ports so the card gets assigned to COM1 or COM2.

Regards
cww
 
> When we needed to add a DAQ card, we got a new computer with that capability,
> but it didn't have a serial port (it has a motherboard header, but no port). We
> added a PCIe serial port card with a 16950 UART.

You probably need to install a driver before the PCIe card will work. What is the make and model of the card?

But I'd be more inclined to try to use the serial header on the motherboard. I've added cables and connectors to motherboards. Usually you'll have to enable the port in the BIOS. But this should work without the need to add any third party driver (like your PCIe card will need).

www.CtrlTerm.com has free troubleshooting tools
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I've done a loopback test and the card passes. It also does require a driver and the one supplied with the card was installed. The card can be set to COM(whatever).

Our main control program is fixed on COM1, but another monitoring program is flexible and we can tell it what port to look on for the controller.

I think I'm still leaning towards some Flow Control thing. There's no option with the card to turn off the flow control, just adjust the Send/Receive Trigger and Buffer levels. The trouble is I've played around with these and WatView still doesn't pick up the controller. :(
 
> There's no option with the card to turn off the flow control,

Isn't flow control done in Windows by a setting in Device Manager?

control panel > system > Hardware > Device Manager > ports > communications port COMx > port settings > flow control
 
If I disable the internal (on-board) com ports, (and even if I don't) yes, I can set it to COM1. Even still, I can't get a detection.

I'm going to try the control panel method of turning the flow control off - though I seem to recall (before the Christmas break) that opening that hardware page brings up a custom screen in which there is no ability to turn off the flow control - but I can make adjustments to the trigger and buffer size levels, just not to zero.

~Paul
 
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