‘restart’ facilities - What do they do?

[jclay13]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for the quick fix on the PFC dll. You're the man!!! :D

I have a question...What exactly do the restart facilities do? :?: I see you disabled them in Windows 98. Just wondering. Thanks in advance for your reply. :)

Jonathan Clay

[Pete Dowson]

I have a question...What exactly do the restart facilities do? :?: I see you disabled them in Windows 98.

They are described, as all changes are, in the History section of the documentation ("PFC User Guide") within the ZIP, and actually also in the details of releases at the top of this forum. Here, I'll reproduce the relevant notes for you, below.

Regards,

Pete

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In Version 1.63

... the PFC driver will respond to a “restart PFC driver” Hot Key message by closing the serial port and both read and write threads, and restarting them. This may be useful if there are any problems on the COM port or the PFC power supply. The hot key is supported in FSUIPC version 3.09 or later.

In Version 1.70

The ‘restart’ facility is operated automatically if no data is received from the PFC device within a specific time, defaulting to 3 seconds. The idea of this is to attempt automatic recovery from stoppages in COM port operation on some systems. So far, it seems these may be related to the Intel ICH5/ICH5R chipset, though this is simply based on the only similarities between the two machines on which it is known to have happened.

...

A facility is provided to automatically restart the COM port operations soon after first initialisation. This has the benefit of synchronising most, if not all, of the PFC toggle and selector type switch settings in the simulation. This is enabled by default.