OPEN/COM/INPUT statement

[Anonymous]

I run PC-BASIC releases 15.03.5 and 15.08.1 on a 64 bit Windows computer. I use the serial port to access a measurement device.
With the 15.03.5 release, the command

OPEN "COM1:9600,N,8,1" FOR RANDOM AS 1
works well, but with the 15.08.1 release this leads to the output "Device timeout".

An even bigger problem is the COM statement. The statement works with port 1, but not with port 2. For example, when I type

COM(2) OFF
the program quits unexpectedly (to try this out I assigned com1 and com2 in the PCBASIC.INI to the same port).

The program also quits when I enter the command

INPUT #1,S$,F!
while the serial port open in #1 should output a string character and a float number.

I hope you can help, thanks!
Patrik

[Rob Hagemans]

Hi Patrik, thanks for your report!

I can reproduce the second issue, so that should be relatively easy to solve for the next minor release.

For the other two issues, the problem is that I don't have a serial port on my computer so this may be a bit more difficult. The more information you can give, the better I can figure this out.

For issue (1), is there a time delay before you get the Device timeout error or does it happen immediately? Do you know more about what your device expects to see and what signals it sends? I suspect the issue lies in the settings for the DSR/DTR pins on the serial port, but this is just a guess for now. Would you have a manual or any other information about the device?
One thing to try might be to set a different timeout value or the DSR signal, with e.g.:
OPEN "COM1:9600,N,8,1,DS4000" FOR RANDOM AS 1

For issue (3), could you run PC-BASIC from the command line? If you do that, when it crashes, do you get any message? If so, please post it here, as this might tell me what the issue is.

Thanks again!
Rob

[Rob Hagemans]

Issue (2) has been solved in the git repository, will include in next bugfix release.

[Anonymous]

Hi Rob,

for issue (1), there is no time delay. The Device timeout error occurs immediately after entering the command. I tried other DSR settings, but the error still shows up. An other interesting thing is, that in the 15.03.5 release
OPEN "COM1:9600,N,8,1,RS,CS,DS" FOR RANDOM AS 1
works properly while in the 15.08.1 release, the program crashes (without error messages).
The device I am testing the program with is a thermometer. You can have a look at the serial port specifications in chapter 7.1 of http://www.advindsys.com/Manuals/HartManuals/1502A.pdf

For issue (3), there is no error message.

Thanks,
Patrik

[Rob Hagemans]

Thanks for the information - I will investigate.

One more thing: could you try to run issue (3) and that last crash with the options --debug --logfile=log.txt and post the contents of log.txt here? I'm hoping the error message may appear in the logfile.

[Anonymous]

Note that the command
INPUT #1,S$,F!
was executed in release 15.03.5 since in 15.08.1 I could not open the device. The logfile shows only:

INFO: Falling back to video_ansi interface.
WARNING: Failed to initialise sound. Sound will be disabled.
DEBUG: Error on closing screen: global name 'logger' is not defined

For the command
OPEN "COM1:9600,N,8,1,RS,CS,DS" FOR RANDOM AS 1
in release 15.08.1, the logfile shows

INFO: Falling back to video_ansi interface.
WARNING: Failed to initialise sound. Sound will be disabled.

ERROR: Unhandled exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.__main__", line 168, in start_basic
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 46, in start
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 60, in run_once
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 155, in parse_statement
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 1113, in exec_open
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.devices", line 80, in open_file
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 125, in open
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\My Documents\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 394, in open
TypeError: unsupported type for timedelta microseconds component: str

DEBUG: Error on closing screen: global name 'logger' is not defined

Maybe this helps for issue (1).

[Rob Hagemans]

Thanks, that should be useful for debugging.

Out of curiosity, I note that you use the text interface (video_ansi) - is that by choice or does the graphical interface not work for some reason?

Rob

[Anonymous]

That's by choice, the graphical interface works perfectly.

[Anonymous]

Hi Rob,

thank you for the 15.08.2 release. It seems that issue (1) and (2) have been solved.
However, the program still crashes when I type

OPEN "COM2:9600,N,8,1,RS,DS,CS,CD" FOR RANDOM AS 1
PRINT #1,"H"
INPUT #1,IN$

with the error message:

ERROR: Unhandled exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.main", line 168, in start_basic
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 46, in start
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 60, in run_once
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 108, in parse_statement
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 1979, in exec_input
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.devices", line 367, in read_var
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.devices", line 389, in _input_entry
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.devices", line 452, in read
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 256, in read_raw
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 231, in check_read
TypeError: can't concat NoneType to bytearray

Further, it crashes when I execute the loc() function (which works in the 15.03.5 release)

OPEN "COM2:9600,N,8,1,RS,DS,CS,CD" FOR RANDOM AS 1
A=LOC(1)

with the following message:

ERROR: Unhandled exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.main", line 168, in start_basic
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 46, in start
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.run", line 60, in run_once
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 100, in parse_statement
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.statements", line 1886, in exec_let
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.expressions", line 74, in parse_expression
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.expressions", line 245, in parse_expr_unit
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.expressions", line 571, in value_loc
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 307, in loc
File "E:\pc-basic\packaging\windows\build\installer\out00-PYZ.pyz\pcbasic.ports", line 231, in check_read
TypeError: can't concat NoneType to bytearray

I hope the error messages help.

Patrik

[Rob Hagemans]

Thanks Patrik, the error messages pointed me straight at the bug (the same one in both cases - a function missing a return value).

Is it possible for you to set up the source version from git? I'm asking because it would enable you to get this fix quicker; it may end up being a couple of weeks before I do a new packaged release. In particular if there are any follow-up fixes needed this would speed up the process a lot, since packaging a release is fairly time-consuming.

There may well be further regressions from 15.03.5 is between these releases the device code has gone through big changes. Apart from your feedback, the code accessing physical serial ports is largely untested - since I do not have one and had to make do with ports emulated through sockets.

It's a bit of work installing the dependencies, but you only need to do that once. Happy to talk you through the process if you run into difficulties - there are instructions but I haven't got much feedback on how clear they are.

Thanks again for helping test this!
Rob

[Anonymous]

I followed the instructions in INSTALL.md (except installing pyparallel), but I got stuck with an error while running pcbasic. It seems that some encoding settings are not right, but I don't know where and how to change them. I hope you can help.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "...\Continuum\Anaconda2\Lib\threading.py", line 810, in bootstrapinner
self.run()
File "...\Continuum\Anaconda2\Lib\threading.py", line 763, in run
self.target(self.args, self.kwargs)
File "...\pcbasic\video.py", line 73, in consumerthread
while self.drainvideoqueue():
File "...\pcbasic\video.py", line 105, in drainvideoqueue
self.putglyph(signal.params)
File "...\pcbasic\videoansi.py", line 192, in putglyph
sys.stdout.write(char)
File "...\Continuum\Anaconda2\Lib\encodings\cp850.py", line 12, in encode
return codecs.charmapencode(input,errors,encodingmap)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\u2190' in position 0: character maps to <undefined>

Thanks, Patrik.

[Rob Hagemans]

Hm, that's an annoying one. I'm not using Anaconda Python for PC-BASIC, seems their encoding settings are different so I haven't run into this issue before. We'll probably have to make a small kludge in the source to get this to work. I'll come up with something in a bit.

Rob

[Rob Hagemans]

It's a proper bug - no encoding is specified on the console output. In my install that worked but it's not correct. Will be fixed shortly.

I realise one thing I didn't mention before: it looks like you're working off the master branch. That's fine if you get it working, but it's still quite rough around the edges. The code for the version you've been using so far, plus bugfixes, is in the release-15.08 branch. If you have git installed, you can switch to that branch with git checkout release-15.08.

To get console output working correctly on WIndows you'll probably need the ansipipe launcher binary - either compile it with mingw32 or msvc++ from the source distribution or just take the small pcbasic.com (not the larger .exe!) from the 15.08.2 install and rename it ansipipe.exe in your source directory, then run with ansipipe python pcbasic. Without ansipipe you're likely to see a lot of gibberish being dumped into your console.

Thanks
Rob

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot! With this help I got it to run.

[Rob Hagemans]

Great! Now whenever there are bugfixes on that branch you can get them with with a git pull - let me know how things go with the serial access and hopefully we can hammer it all out so that it works.

Cheers,
Rob