Fwd: SRBox problem

[Roni Tibon]

Hi all,

 

We're experiencing some problems with a serial response box we have recently puchased (model 200A). When trying to run an experiment in E-Prime using the box we get an error message numbered 10051 (see image SRBox1.jpg). We are running E-Prime 2 on a Windows XP computer.

 

The SRBox is connected to the actual port (and not to a serial-to-USB adapter).

 

The drivers are installed on the machine, and the device is well connected. We couldn't locate any conflicting ports, and we have full privileges on the machine. We also tried changing the "bits per second" property for the port (under device manager) to 19,200, but it didn't help.
 

Attached is a screenshot of the device manager (SRBox2.jpg). As you can see, the SRBox appears under "Other devices", and not under "Communications Port". Could this be the problem? What might cause it?
 
However - when I tested the box using the SRBoxTester, everything looked OK (see attached image - SRBox3.jpg - which was taken while holding keys 2 & 3) . 
  
Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Roni

[Michiel Spape]

Hi Roni,

Not much, just the following: have you actually added it to Experiment Properties (edit>experiment>devices>add SRBOX, make sure it is actually on), rather than, for instance, a SERIAL object? If it is, you could turn it off and on (all lights on the SRBOX should light up) and see if the lights turn off when you start the experiment. Make it a blank experiment, change nothing in the SRBOX properties, and see whether adding only one text display with infinite duration and only the SRBOX as input object turns off.

 

Other than that, I can’t imagine much else goes wrong, unless the device installation went awry at some point during E-Prime installation. You could try re-installing e-prime.

Cheers,

Mich

 

Michiel Spapé

Research Fellow

Perception & Action group

University of Nottingham

School of Psychology

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

[Roni Tibon]

Hi Mich,

Thank you for your reply!

 

The box was added to the experimet preoperties.

 

I followed what you suggested - running a simple experiment with just the srbox, and got the same error message.

The lights did not turn off when I started the experiment. Does it mean that e-prime doesn't connect with the box? 

 

I'd love to hear from you, or any one else, if there's anything else I should check or do, before trying to uninstall the program.

 

Thanks!

Roni 

2009/8/5 Michiel Spape <Michie...@nottingham.ac.uk>

[Michiel Spape]

Hi Roni,

Bummer. No, that would indeed suggest that rather than anything in E-Prime, there seems to be something malfunctioning in the driver. Have you tried running the experiment, with the SRBox, on a different computer?  

 

I tried to create an experiment like I suggested below and (though I have no SRBox in my office) added the SRBox, BUT disabled the PST Serial Response Box driver. This caused the exact same crash as your screenshot. Re-enabling the PST Serial Response Box Driver in device manager caused my experiment to run normally (though, of course, I couldn’t get very far without the actual PST box). So, you might try uninstalling this particular driver and reinstalling it. Perhaps there’s a little installer for it in the E-Prime setup?

 

The PST SRBox Driver is supposed to be where you show it, by the way. It looks ugly in its unrecognised state, but it’s always been like that (if I am correctly, even under win98).

[Roni Tibon]

Hi Mich,

We installed everything on a different machine, and it worked perfectly!
There is a Radix card installed on the original computer, and we suspect that this was the source of the problem. We will try to remove it tomorrow and see how it goes.

Anyway - thanks a lot for all your help!