From: Claus Urbanke <Urbanke.Claus@MH-Hannover.DE>
  To  : rasmb@bbri.org
  Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 13:26:39 +0100

Help wanted with a serious XL-A data communication failure

Dear RASMBers,

When installing our XL-A two years ago we ebcountered a similar problem. 
Running xla software 3.00 on an IBM P-100 sporadically we would get a "com port failure" 
and sometimes (not everytime) the scans would stop. We were told that using windows95 
could be the source of this problem. However, after setting the FIFO buffers of the COM 
port in our windows95 system to the lowest possible value the problem disappeared 
altogether.

The problem reappeared when a few weeks ago we tried to replace the IBM P-100 with a 33 
MHz 486 (undoubtedly a bit slow). This machine produced the error about once in 3 hours 
even with FIFO buffers set low  and we had to return to the IBM machine.

Concluding it might help to use a faster computer and set the FIFO buffers to the lowest 
values possible (Our German version of windows95 suggests doing that in case of 
connection problems).I run a geman version of Windows95 in which I reach 
the FIFO settings by 
Start>
Einstellungen>
Systemsteuerung>
System>
Geraete-Manager>
Eigenschaften COM1>
Anschlusseinstellungen>
Erweitert

Maybe this can help

Claus

        Claus Urbanke
        Medizinische Hochschule
        Biophysikalisch-Biochemische Verfahren
        OE 8830 
        Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1
D-30623 Hannover
        Germany

Tel.:(+49) 511 532 3707 (2928)
FAX :(+49) 511 532 5966

Urbanke@bpc.MH-Hannover.de